


A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes

by pidgeotto_gunderson



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Dreamscapes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, Headspace, Hurt/Comfort, In a sense, Insecurity, M/M, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Temporary Amnesia, Voltron General Big Bang 2017, alternate universe - post-voltron, god im never writing anything longer than 6000 words ever again, just be careful, only in one scene and that'll be mentioned in the notes so you can skip i guess, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 06:13:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 50,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11777142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pidgeotto_gunderson/pseuds/pidgeotto_gunderson
Summary: When Lance is captured by the Galra, the rest of the crew finds him quickly - alive, but unconscious. The team tries everything they can think of to wake him up, but find that the only way to do it is to project another’s consciousness into Lance’s. Keith volunteers, and dives into Lance’s headspace, with only the instruction to bring Lance back with him. But when Keith finds himself getting sucked into the fantasy that Lance has built, he not only has to figure out how to drag Lance out of la la land, but he now has to hold on to the memory of another world - the real world - that is suddenly slipping through his fingers.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is my piece for the 2017 [voltron big bang](http://voltronbang.tumblr.com/). special thanks to my artist [@forsakenangel88](http://forsakenangel88.tumblr.com/) and my beta [@dearevanheatherton](https://dearevanheatherton.tumblr.com/) (different URL than the banner on the art post). i had a whole lot of fun working on this and working with my partner for this bang!
> 
> trigger warning for self-harm in day 7, starting after "Except his vision is blurring and he can’t read the labels or even hold the bottles - some of which clatter to the floor, making Keith jump". it's safe right around "Honey, I'm home!"

Two weeks.

 

They find Lance in a lone Galra ship, floating along through space, two weeks after he was captured.

 

It’s much too easy, really, and on any other day, Keith would’ve known immediately that something was wrong. There’s virtually no guards, no protection, and Hunk finds Lance strapped to a table in a totally empty room.  _He’s here, he’s okay, but he’s out cold, guys, I’m gonna have to carry him back to Yellow._

 

From there, it’s just a simple extraction. Keith joins Hunk and they cart Lance off to where Pidge is waiting for them. Quick. Simple.

 

But nothing’s ever simple with the Paladins, is it?

 

In retrospect, Keith really should’ve seen it coming.

 

* * *

 

 

Days pass. Two days, four, a week. Lance doesn’t wake up.

 

It’s hard for everyone. Keith can feel the worry, the fear, the overall lack of Lance, resonating throughout the whole team. Lance isn’t dead, of course, but they’re all still grieving, in their own ways. Pidge throws herself completely into work, spending as much time as humanly possible building and coding various machines that she claims will help in the fight against the Galra. Hunk bakes, almost compulsively, to calm his anxiety, along with helping Pidge whenever she needs him. Shiro, who doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself, projects his emotions into flying. Allura and Coran both put all of their energy into running tests on Lance that never really tell them anything and trying to figure out why he won’t wake.

 

Keith fights.

 

He fights the training simulator, over and over and over. He fights the aliens that have taken over the planet that the Paladins receive a distress call from, far more ruthlessly than normal. He fights his own teammates, constantly itching for some type of altercation.

 

He argues with Shiro, he yells at Allura, he snaps at Pidge, he even makes Hunk cry once. Keith’s not sure what he’s searching for, with the awful, exhilarating spark he feels every time someone fights back. The natural human instinct of fight-or-flight has been deeply embedded in him for years and years now, and he's always preferred fight over flight. All of it somehow makes him feel better and worse at the same time.

 

Keith never thought losing Lance (he’s not gone -  _ambiguous loss_ , Hunk called it) would throw him off so much. He finds himself yearning for Lance’s stupid insults and sharp words, for their petty arguments and ridiculous ‘rivalry’, for the sheer  _opposition_ that Lance provided.

 

The loss  _aches_.

 

It aches somewhere in the pit of his stomach; up on the training deck, out on a mission, sitting on the observation deck in the dead of night, Keith feels it. He folds his legs underneath him, stares out at the stars, and feels it, deep in his bones, buried somewhere under the thirty pounds of emotional baggage he wants nothing to do with.

 

He doesn’t cry. He watches other people cry, watches Hunk and Pidge and Shiro and Coran and even Allura end up in tears, constantly, over this, over Lance, over everything and nothing all at once, and he feels nothing. There’s nothing to feel, really, when it comes to other people’s pain. He’s numb to the tears of his friends family teammates, numb to their feelings, numb to their suffering, unless it’s caused by him. He’s not sure how he feels about that.

 

He’s not sure if it’s just a general lack of empathy or if it’s that he’s already got so much pain of his own that he can’t deal with anyone else’s. Either way, Keith sees someone’s eyes glisten, and his first instinct is to leave before the tears start falling.

 

Before they found Lance, he spent whole nights fully awake, sitting up with Pidge and helping her (or keeping her awake, really) as she worked to pinpoint Lance’s location.

 

Now, after they’ve found Lance, he spends whole nights half-asleep, wandering the castle in pajama pants and a t-shirt, his feet bare, running his fingers along the cool walls and reveling in the history of it all.

 

(He has his own history, obviously - a big, confusing, miserable tangle of history that he’d rather not get into. He prefers the histories of other people, other places, other things, and letting his own past fade into the back of his mind, into bad memories that occasionally rise to the surface, just to be choked back right along with the taste of bile in his throat.)

 

It’s hard for everyone, but for Keith, it’s more than hard. It’s unsettling, it’s agitating, it’s unbalancing. The whole thing throws him for a loop so badly that there are multiple occasions where he turns and delivers half of a snide comment to a boy who isn’t even there before remembering. He hates it, hates how Hunk’s lip will start quivering, how Pidge will look away and pretend she’s not hurting, how Shiro will give him this awful sympathetic look that Keith particularly despises. How whatever speech Allura was giving will pause and Coran’s breath will hitch, just for a moment, before everyone collects themselves and Keith relearns how to breathe.

 

Keith and Lance existed in a perpetual state of _i_ _n-between_ and Keith doesn’t know how to let go of that.

 

So he doesn’t.

 

So he fights people who aren’t Lance, in lieu of fighting Lance. So he searches (and searches and searches) for the feeling (the spark) that Lance used to cause (and doesn’t find it, he never finds it). So he exists instead in a perpetual state of  _longing_ and pretends it’s not unhealthy.

 

So he spirals and so he crashes.

 

* * *

 

“Coran and I have come to the conclusion,” Allura says, “that there is no way to wake Lance with external sources.”

 

The wave of shock goes through each Paladin, one by one, beginning with Hunk and floating around the room. Allura stands with Coran at her side at the foot of Lance’s bed in the sickbay, looking three sleepless nights past tired, while the rest of the team sits around the bed. There’s varying degrees of emotion portrayed in the faces around Keith - fear, sadness, pain (mostly from Hunk). Anger, denial (Pidge). Worry, concern (Shiro). Keith is the last one to react and the first one to recover.

 

“So what can we do?”

 

Six sets of eyes bore into him. Keith ignores all of them, staring resolutely, instead, at Lance. Allura says, “Excuse me?”

 

“What can we  _do?"_  Keith repeats, loudly, slowly. Lance is totally still. It’s disconcerting.

 

(Lance is always a flurry of motion; Keith can’t remember seeing Lance sit still before now. Even at team meetings and such, he’s fidgeting.)

 

“Right, yes.” Allura runs a hand through her messy hair. “Well, while Coran and I are not certain of a solution, we  _have_  determined the root of the problem.”

 

“Then what -” Keith starts, impatient, and Allura quells him with a glare.

 

She continues, “Essentially, Lance is…for lack of a better word, stuck. Whatever the Galra did to him has him trapped in his own mind.”

 

Hunk pipes up from the other side of the bed, Lance’s limp hand gripped in his. “So he’s in a coma. A mental coma.”

 

“…Basically, yes.”

 

“You said -” Hunk sniffs - “You said we can’t wake him up with  _external sources._ Are there -”

 

“- other sources we can use, then?” Pidge picks up the end of Hunk’s sentence, eyes bright with what looks like hope. Keith bites back the urge to tell her that hope is for suckers, just to be cruel.

 

“It is possible, but…” Allura bites her lip, worry lines etched in her forehead, and looks to Coran, who puts a hand on Allura’s shoulder, squeezes once, and takes over.

 

“Thing is, Paladins,” he says, “the typical methods are not working because we have been trying to wake his body, rather than his mind. Allura and I think that if we use a certain alternative,  _internal_ method, we may be able to wake him.”

 

Keith opens his mouth, but closes it again when Shiro beats him to it. “You two are trying really hard to avoid telling us what this ‘alternative method’ actually is.”

Allura and Coran exchange a look. The tense silence lasts for all of twenty seconds before Allura sighs and says, “It is risky and there is a small chance that it could be fatal to either or both parties involved, but…we think we can project someone into Lance’s mind, and that person can pull Lance out of whatever dream world he is in.”

 

“You  _think?"_

 

“What do you mean, ‘project’?”

 

_"Fatal?"_

 

“I’ll do it.”

 

The words are out of Keith’s mouth before he even knows what he’s saying. The whole room is staring at him again. But he can’t take it back now - and, when he really thinks about it, he doesn’t want to - so he sets his jaw, clenches his fists at his sides, and focuses on counting Lance’s eyelashes. The question floats in the air, and Keith starts answering before anyone can even ask. “I mean, someone’s got to do it, right? If this is the only option, we can’t just leave him like this. And it makes sense for me to do it -” He’s making this up as he goes, but he can’t stop talking now that he’s started - “since the Galra caused this and I’m - I’m -”

  
  
“We know,” Allura cuts him off, but she gives him a soft smile and Keith knows it’s not harsh this time. “But Keith -”

 

“Why should  _you_ be the one to do it?” Hunk gives him this look that’s two parts confused and one part angry. Keith opens his mouth to speak, and by the looks of it, Shiro does too, but Hunk keeps talking before either of them get a word out. “You and Lance aren’t even friends _._ ”

 

Shiro starts, “Hunk -”

 

“What are you  _implying?_ ” Keith says over him, barreling over Shiro’s resigned sigh. He can practically hear Shiro’s voice -  _here we go again._

 

Hunk releases Lance’s hand to run his own through his hair, tugging his headband from around his forehead. “Shouldn’t someone close to him do it? Someone who’s actually capable of talking to Lance without -”

 

“Oh, you’ve  _got_ to be kidding me.” And there it is - that spark. That sick sense of satisfaction blooming in his chest. It’s like oxygen to him, the thrill he gets when anger begins to boil up. “Just because you’re Lance’s best friend or whatever doesn’t mean that you’re the only one he ever hung out with.”

 

(And it’s true - contrary to popular belief, Keith’s relationship with Lance doesn’t (didn’t? no,  _doesn’t_ )  _only_ consist of fighting. Sure, they argue, and sure, they’re competitive, but Keith likes to think they’re at least  _friends_.)

 

“That’s not what I said,” Hunk says, still decidedly calmer than Keith. “I’m being realistic, Keith, and  _realistically_ , it doesn’t make sense to use you.”

 

“None of this is exactly realistic, Hunk,” Pidge butts in. Hunk shoots her a scandalized look.

 

“Who’s side are you  _on?_ ”

 

“Neither. Both.” Pidge pulls her hair, which has grown quite a lot since this all started, back, yanks a hair tie off her wrist with her teeth, and ties her hair into a messy ponytail, all the while saying, “I’m on Lance’s side, guys. That’s the only side there should be.”

 

Hunk is quiet, defeated, slumping down in his chair with a huff. Keith bites his tongue, too, because Pidge is right. Which isn’t surprising, because Pidge is almost always right, and she’s been playing mediator between him and Hunk for weeks now.

 

“Thank you, Pidge,” Allura says levelly, making everyone turn toward her again. Keith is always impressed with the way she holds herself, even now, when the circles under the princess’ eyes could rival Keith’s own. She hasn’t so much as seen her own bedroom in days, and yet she still commands a room. “Now, the sooner we get this process started, the better. Lance’s body is being sustained by both our equipment and whatever his captors did, but it cannot last forever. We need to begin as soon as possible.”

 

It’s Shiro who speaks next, in his  _overcompensating diplomat_ voice. “Could you explain this…’process’ more, then? No matter who’s doing this -  _if_ someone’s doing this - we should have all the information making any  _potentially fatal_ decisions.”

 

“Yes, of course,” Allura says. She sits on the edge of Lance’s bed, hand resting lightly on Lance’s ankle. “Coran, would you -?”

 

“Can do, Princess.” Coran picks up some tube with a sharp point at the end. “See, this tube connects to whoever is diving into Lance’s headspace. It creates a disconnect between the body and the mind, taking the mind into a state of hyperreality, of sorts. This gives us the ability to take their consciousness and merge it with another’s.”

 

He gestures toward some weird piece of equipment that looks sort of like two mind-melding helmets with a tube attaching them. “Now, this piece here is worn by both parties, linking them together in a way that is quite like your bonding exercises. But unlike the mind-melding helmets, this machine not only connects the mind, but the consciousness as a whole. By connecting both parties to the machine and to each other, the parties will, for a time, be on the same wavelength, causing them to essentially share the same headspace.”

 

Coran looks proud of this whole gig, while Keith is just grateful that he even understood it. Keith glances around the room, gauging reactions.

 

Pidge is obviously impressed with the tech, like she always is when it comes to Altean machinery, and she’s nodding along like she thinks this could actually work. Hunk just looks happy that they have a plan at all, even if it’s something as unpromising as this. But Shiro’s is the reaction Keith is most interested in.

 

Keith knows that, when it comes down to it, Shiro’s vote weighs more than those of the others. No one will say it out loud, but it’s true.

 

And thankfully, Shiro seems to be considering it.

 

“So what are the odds?” Keith can practically see the gears turning in Shiro’s head, calculating the risk and reward of the matter. “How likely is it that this will work?”

 

Even as Coran says, “I’d say about fifty-fifty,” Keith knows he’ll do it no matter the odds.

 

Shiro nods, lips pursed. “And if…if we don’t do it?” He looks a little nauseous at the very thought. Hunk makes a strangled noise.

 

“Well…” Coran deflates ever so slightly. “We can keep Lance’s body alive for a while, but…if we do not use this method, Lance will eventually perish.”

 

There’s another odd noise from Hunk. Keith digs his fingernails into his palm, the pain grounding him to reality, while he watches Pidge anxiously tug at her ponytail. The whole room  _bleeds_ anxiety, the atmosphere suffocatingly tight.

 

“That - that’s not an option,” Hunk says stiffly.

 

Everyone nods in agreement. They can’t just leave Lance like this when there’s something,  _anything,_ that they can do about it. Keith crosses his arms over his chest, wondering where the hell this all went wrong.

 

(Really, he’d like to know. Was it only the mission or did something break before that? Maybe the fractures in the framework of their lives began with  _who are you? Uh, the name’s Lance._

 

Maybe it even began back at the Garrison, way back when, with failed simulations and cargo class and  _pilot error._ )

 

Keith hears himself say, “Hunk’s right. If this is the only way, then we have to try.”

 

“Agreed,” Pidge says, leaning into Hunk, who wraps an arm around her and lets her rest her head on his shoulder. Keith wishes he could unsee the dullness in her eyes. “There’s no way in hell we’re doing nothing.”

 

They all look to Shiro, who locks eyes with first Keith, then Pidge, then Hunk. Turns next to Allura, with who he has a long, silent exchange with, involving quickly-changing expressions and somehow understanding what the other is trying to get across with only their eyes.

 

After about thirty seconds, Allura says, “We would not have suggested this if we didn’t think it would work, Shiro. Nor would we even explore an option that was more likely to be harmful than helpful.”

 

Shiro sighs, runs a hand through his hair. “I know, Princess. I just worry that something  _will_ go wrong - something always seems to - and then we’ll have lost  _two_ paladins.”

 

“But if we do not do anything at all, we will never know if we could have saved Lance.”

 

Their conversation carries on as if Keith and the others aren’t even there.

  
“I understand that, but we’re even worse off if this plan fails.”

 

“Shiro -”

 

“Lance would do this for you,” Hunk cuts in, and he’s suddenly angry, eyes ablaze, brighter than they’ve been in weeks. “Lance wouldn’t hesitate to do this for you, or any of us, or a  _complete stranger_ , and you all know it. So why the  _hell_ are we hesitating to do the same for him?”

 

The room falls into a stunned silence. Hunk is glaring at Shiro, who’s got that deer-in-headlights look on his face as he stares, wide-eyed, at Hunk. Under the scrutiny of Hunk’s gaze, Shiro actually seems to shrink the tiniest bit and, after a long, tense moment, realize that Hunk is right.

 

“Okay,” he says, resigned. “Okay, then. Next question: who’s doing this?”

 

Keith and Hunk immediately start talking over each other, but before it can escalate into yet another argument, Shiro holds a hand up. They both stop talking, each expecting Shiro to take his side.

 

“One at a time, guys.” Shiro takes neither side, of course. “We’ll take a vote, alright? Who wants to go first?”

 

Hunk volunteers before Keith can even fully process the question.

 

“Alright, Hunk.” Shiro nods to him. “Make your case.”

 

* * *

 

As Hunk explains why he thinks he should be the one to ‘dive into Lance’s headspace’, Keith is inexplicably reminded of the two weeks - the two  _long, torturous_ weeks - that he spent on his middle school debate team in eighth grade .

 

This feels absurdly like debate club, just minus the podiums and the ridiculous stuffy blazers. Seating has been rearranged so that Coran sits in Hunk’s chair, while Hunk now stands at the foot of the bed, allowing Hunk to stare everyone down as he talks. He’s actually pretty good at this, as it seems, at least in comparison to how badly Keith crashed and burned on stage during those two weeks.

 

Keith  _hated_ the debate team.

 

He doesn’t pay much attention to Hunk’s argument (there’s something about him being Lance’s best friend and a bit about him and Lance practically sharing the same headspace already (which, Keith supposes, is a little true), before Keith tunes him out), too busy trying to figure out how the hell he’s supposed to convince everyone that he’s the better option.  _I just am_ doesn’t exactly cut it, in this case. Or any case, generally speaking.

 

But Lance is still oh, so quiet (too quiet) on the bed beside him, so when Hunk finishes up his turn, Keith pushes all debate club flashbacks out of his head, clears his throat, and pulls an argument out of his ass.

 

“As appealing as  _the power of friendship_ is,” Keith says, unable to resist taking a jab at Hunk’s reasoning, “I actually have a built in leg-up here.” He really does hate to make his heritage out to be an advantage of some sort, though it kind of  _is,_ in a way, but he’ll get over it if that’s what’ll win this for him.

 

“Seeing as I have Galra DNA -” even now, the words still catch in his throat “- there’s a chance that their tech will be less effective on me, meaning there’s a chance that I’ll have a much easier time doing this than anyone else would.” Realistically speaking, that’s probably not true, but fuck if Keith cares.

 

“And anyway,” Keith says, already set to conclude because, really, fuck debate club and their minimum time rules, “it makes more sense for Hunk to be here, since he and Pidge are the techies here. I’m not going to be any help with - with monitoring and all the technical shit, but Hunk will. I’m the expendable one here, so I might as well be put to use somehow.”

 

That’s all he’s got.

 

He just hopes it’s all he needs.

 

Keith has to do this. He needs this - he needs to do  _something_ instead of just sitting around and waiting for someone else to fix everything. Or for something else to go wrong. Whichever comes first.

 

(Shiro keeps telling him that it’s fine, it’s okay that this isn’t his strong suit, but Keith knows better.)

 

“Alright,” Shiro says, and Keith can hear his inherent desire to tell Keith that  _no, you’re not expendable_ in his voice, see it in the way Shiro looks at him. It’s the big brother instinct. Keith rolls his eyes as Shiro continues. “Now we’ve heard both sides, we’ll vote.”

 

Normally, Keith can tell who’s on his side, whatever the argument be. It’s not a skill he likes having, not because it’s not useful, but because of how it was developed.

 

In this case, however, he can’t read anyone’s faces.

 

Pidge will vote for Hunk, he thinks, because they’re all friends and that’s what friends do.

 

Shiro, Keith assumes, will vote for him, mostly because he knows just how much Keith needs this.

 

Allura and Coran both could go either way, though he’s willing to bet that Allura will lean his way, while Coran will go for Hunk.

 

That’s two and two, which Shiro seems to be realizing as well, because he says, “I’ll sit out so there’s no tie,” and Keith knows he’s screwed. He shoots a glare at Shiro, who just gives him a half-assed shrug and an apologetic look. 

 

But Keith doesn’t have time to dwell on the fact that he’s completely and totally fucked. Allura takes over from Shiro, saying, “Show of hands for Hunk?”

 

There’s this moment where Keith is sure he’s going to have to find some way to survive however long it takes for Hunk to save Lance, and then Coran’s hand is the only one that goes up and he almost chokes.

 

Shiro and Coran both are nearly as surprised as he is, while Hunk’s betrayal is evident in the look he gives Pidge, like she’s done him the greatest disservice possible. Pidge, having pulled away from Hunk’s side, hugs herself and sucks in a breath like she’s about to launch into some long explanation of her reasoning, but ends up just saying, “Sorry,” in this timid voice that Keith never wants to hear from her again.

 

Shiro still says, rather unnecessarily, “Right, okay, then…show of hands for Keith?” Allura and Pidge’s hands rise. Keith sits up a little straighter. Hunk stands and walks out of the room without a word.

 

Pidge immediately starts to go after him, but Coran stops her, still chipper as ever, telling her, “Give him time, my girl.” Pidge looks conflicted, glancing between Coran and the doorway, then to Keith, who gives her a tiny smile that feels more like a grimace. But her face lights up when Coran adds, “Besides, I could use your help with this procedure.”

 

Keith watches them fiddle with the equipment, picking at the hem of his shirt. He can feel Shiro’s gaze on the side of his head, but he ignores it in favor of asking, “So what  _exactly_ do I have to do?” 

 

He doesn’t much care about the logistics of the whole affair, or all the technical stuff that will just go right over his head anyway. He doesn’t care about the risk. Everything they do is risky. That’s why Lance is unconscious in the first place.

 

What he’d like to know is how the hell he can fix this.

 

“Ah, well,” Allura begins, and Keith can already tell that this won’t be good. “We cannot tell you exactly what to expect, Keith, but you must find a way to bring Lance back to reality. All we know for certain is that you will have to convince him that it is not real. Talk him out of it. Find any inconsistencies in his story and use them to poke holes in the dream world. And, most importantly,  _don’t forget why you’re there._ ”

 

“Is that a big possibility?”

 

“I am not sure, Keith, but I can tell you that if you do forget, you could be stuck there forever.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Do not let yourself get sucked in. I do not know what you will face, but be prepared for the worst. We do not even know why Lance is still alive, why the Galra did this instead of simply -”

 

Allura had been staring at Lance, but she glances at Keith, seems to register the look on his face, and stops.

 

“Right, well, anyway - this must be a part of a bigger plot of theirs. So expect the absolute worst and, I repeat,  _do not forget_.”

 

Keith leans forward, rests his elbows on the bed and his chin in his hands. “So…how long do I have?”

 

“Three days,” Allura says. “We can give you three days.”

  
“That’s  _it?_ ”

 

“There is no way to tell just how time translates from reality to the dream. Three days here could be three months in Lance’s head.”

 

Keith nods slowly. Allura sweeps her hair over one shoulder, twirls a strand around her fingers. She shifts, propping one leg up on her knee, says, “We don’t know for sure what it will be like in Lance’s head _._ You cannot, however, make him come back. Forcing him to leave whatever fantasy he is in could have major consequences, Keith. You have to handle this delicately. Can you do that?”

 

He looks between Allura and Lance, considers the question. Allura’s got good reason to ask, he knows, because under normal circumstances,  _delicacy_ isn’t exactly one of Keith’s strong suits.

 

Thing is, these aren’t normal circumstances.

 

Nothing involving Lance has ever been ‘normal circumstances’ to Keith.

 

“Yes,” Keith says, “I can do it.”

 

* * *

 

Twenty minutes later, it’s just Keith and Shiro.

 

Coran and Pidge have already hooked Keith up to the machines, but Pidge took one look between Keith and Shiro and ushered everyone else out of the room. Now, they sit beside each other in another bed that was pushed up against Lance’s.

 

There’s a certain brand of quiet, tense and unprepared, that floats in the air. Keith has sat through a billion of these silences, but they tended to be with people Keith didn’t care about. Social workers, foster parents, the like. Not Shiro.

 

The last time Keith and Shiro were split up, they didn’t even get a goodbye. Not a proper one, at least. There was a send-off, of course, before Shiro left for Kerberos, but Keith was expecting to see Shiro again in just a few months.

 

Turns out the universe had other plans.

 

They found each other, eventually. But Shiro disappeared, once more, not long after the two of them were reunited, not to be found again for a whole two months.

 

And now…

 

“Shiro,” Keith says.

 

“I know.” Shiro clasps his hands stiffly in his lap, gaze locked somewhere in front of him, while Keith stares at the side of his face. “I know, Keith, but…I can’t help thinking something will go wrong and then…”

 

Keith pulls his legs up on his chair, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Listen, Shiro, I wish there was a way to do this that didn’t force us to separate. But it’s only for three days.”

 

“That’s if this works.”

 

He’s right, obviously, though usually Shiro is the more optimistic of the two. But Keith says, “ _When_ this works, ‘Kashi,” because sometimes  _older_ doesn’t have to mean  _stronger._

 

Shiro smiles slightly at the old nickname, looking at Keith with something akin to pride in his eyes. “Listen, Keith, I - I know you need to do this. But I need you to tell me one thing.”

 

Keith nods, feeling so very small under Shiro’s gaze. These are the only times he’ll allow himself to feel as vulnerable as this, when it’s just him and Shiro. When he feels safe.

 

Shiro says, “Just tell me you’re doing this for him. Tell me that you’re not doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons.”

 

He almost asks what exactly he’s implying, what the  _wrong reasons_ might be, but he’s not sure he wants to know.

 

Instead, he leans into Shiro’s side, studies the curve of Lance’s jaw. He doesn’t have to think about this. There’s no question of who he’s doing this for. Even with how much Keith actually needs this, it doesn’t matter. He’s not doing this for himself, though he almost wishes he was. He’s doing this for Lance, and Lance alone.

 

“I am,” Keith says quietly, letting out a deep sigh. “I promise I’ve got all the right reasons, ‘Kashi. And I’ll be okay. You’re not gonna lose me.”

 

“You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”

 

“This is no more dangerous than the rest of our missions, Shiro,” Keith implores, trying his best to keep his cool. “Either one of us could die on any old mission, on any old day. This is no different. And the whole point of Voltron is to save people. How can we call ourselves defenders of the universe if we can’t even save our own teammates?”

 

Shiro gives a soft hum of approval, wraps an arm around Keith’s shoulders. Keith automatically curls farther into Shiro’s side. “You’ve grown a lot since this all started, you know.”

 

“I’m still short, but thanks for trying.”

 

Shiro snorts, but otherwise ignores him. “I’m proud of you, kiddo.”

 

“Thanks.” Keith smiles into Shiro’s sleeve and they sit in now-comfortable silence until Coran and Pidge shuffle back into the room, asking if he’s ready. Keith pulls away from Shiro, twists around to look at them over Shiro’s shoulder. Shiro squeezes Keith’s wrist reassuringly and Keith sets his jaw.

 

“I'm ready.”

 

 

* * *

 

**_Day 1_ **

 

_Silence._

 

_Darkness._

 

_Nothing and everything all at once._

 

_Spiraling, falling, crashing. There’s stars mixed in somewhere, tiny pinpricks of light in the darkness. The universe is cerebral._

 

_Existence has faded. The world, in and of itself, has drifted out of focus. The line between fantasy and reality has blurred._

 

_And then -_

 

_Noise._

 

_A voice._

 

_It’s recognizable, perhaps. There’s something there, a note in the voice that’s vaguely discernible, but something’s missing. It would be identifiable, if only there were an identity to begin with._

 

_Is there?_

 

_And then the voice - the identity that apparently does exist - becomes clearer. A word. A name._

 

_His name? Yes._

 

_Keith._

 

_Keith._

 

“Keith!”

 

Keith sits straight up, drenched in sweat, breath coming out in sharp gasps. The feeling of waking up after a nightmare immediately washes over him, but he has no idea what he was dreaming about.

 

The taste of blood, dull and metallic, fills his mouth. Sharp pain pulses behind his eyes - he’s only just woken up and he’s already got a headache,  _great -_ and the world is blurry around the edges. He can hear someone yelling from - somewhere, but he can’t understand what’s being said.

 

A bedroom. It’s the first thing he fully registers, the fact that he’s lying in  _someone’s_ bedroom. The walls are a soft gray, the sheets dark purple. Keith fumbles with the sheets and practically falls out of the bed.

 

He gags, choking down bile, and ends up propping himself against the wall. His hands are shaking.

 

He hears his name again and thinks,  _Lance._

 

Soft footsteps shuffle outside the door. Keith rests his head on the wall and lifts his eyes to the ceiling. He's seeing stars - except, wait, those are real. Actual gold stars cover the ceiling - stickers, Keith assumes. It's pretty.

 

His attention is drawn from the ceiling to the door as it creaks open, revealing first a pair of blue slippers and then the boy connected to them.

 

Lance stops in the doorway, gives Keith a once-over, and says, “Nightmare? You were yelling.”

 

But Keith is still stuck on the fact that Lance looks…exactly the same.

 

Well no, once Keith has blinked the blurriness out of his eyes, he can actually see the difference between this Lance and his - the  _real_ Lance. He looks older, but only just. There are worry lines etched in his forehead, along with a thin white scar at the corner of his mouth. He’s wearing something  _other than_ that ratty baseball tee and old jeans, which is somehow much more jarring than it should be.

 

So is Keith, actually - clad in something other than his usual outfit: just a pair of boxers and a gray t-shirt that's two sizes too big on him. His hair is a couple inches longer, resting just below his shoulders instead of just above. His body feels different than usual, but he’s not quite sure how.

 

It's…disturbing, to say the least.

 

But as Lance comes toward him, Keith pushes that aside in favor of swatting Lance’s probing hands away and assuring him that  _yes, he is perfectly okay_ and  _no, he does not a glass of water, or anything else, for that matter_.

 

Lance kneels in front of Keith, worry in his gaze. Keith scans his face - for what, he doesn't know. It's just that Lance seems…okay. Keith’s not sure exactly what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this. Allura’s words play on a loop in his head:  _We don’t know for sure what it will be like in Lance’s head. All we know for certain is that you will have to convince him that it is not real._

 

Keith opens his mouth.

 

_It is risky and there is a small chance that it could be fatal to either or both parties involved…_

 

_Forcing him to leave whatever fantasy he is in could have major consequences, Keith._

 

And closes it again.

 

_Major consequences. Potentially fatal._

 

He says, “Lance, please, I’m fine,” but still clings to his shirt sleeve as Lance pulls away. Lance looks like he’s going to protest, but he rocks back on his heels and thankfully lets it go.

 

Pursing his lips, Lance huffs a sigh and stands. His sleeve slips out of Keith’s grasp, but is quickly replaced by Lance’s hand. Keith allows himself to be pulled to his feet, stumbling only a little, as Lance’s face swims in and out of his vision. HIs mouth still tastes of blood - upon further inspection, Keith finds that he bit his lip at some point in this.

 

Lance’s hand lingers in his just a couple seconds longer than necessary, then Lance is saying, “Come downstairs?” and heading out the door, obviously expecting Keith to follow.

 

A momentary hesitation, and then Keith is following, telling himself to  _get a fucking grip._

 

 _This isn’t real,_ he reminds himself.  _Y_ _ou’re here for one reason and one reason only, Kogane._

 

_Save Lance._

 

HIs most important mission yet. The team is relying on him to keep his shit together and fix this whole mess. A boy’s life rests on his shoulders.  _Lance’s life_ is in Keith’s hands.

 

“Well,” Keith mutters, low enough that Lance can’t hear him, “here goes nothing.”

 

* * *

 

Whatever Keith was expecting, it wasn’t this.

 

Lance leads him down a flight of stairs to a living room - a nice one, at that - says something Keith doesn’t quite catch, and leaves him on his own, flicking the lights on as he goes. Keith stands, the cold of the wood floor seeping into him, by a couch and a coffee table.

 

It’s cozy and it’s nice and it’s so very fucking  _normal_ that it takes Keith a good half a minute to even process that it’s just a living room. Lance’s living room. There’s a couch and a TV and a goddamn coffee table and - pictures. Everywhere.

 

Keith finally remembers how to move his feet and walks over to the mantle, where a cluster of picture frames sit. The frames are all different colors and sizes, no two identical, displaying pictures Keith definitely doesn’t remember being taken.

 

Lance himself is only in around half of the photos, staged and candid alike. Some are of people Keith doesn’t recognize - Lance’s family, he deduces - while the others are of the team. The team posed for the camera, smiling, arms thrown around each other; the team minus Lance, sat around a dining table, laughter suspended in time. Keith finds himself in quite a few of the pictures - sitting with a book in hand, his feet resting on Shiro’s lap; ruffling Pidge’s hair as she tries to swat him away; propped up on Hunk’s back, seemingly half asleep. There’s even a blurry candid of him laughing in the rain with Allura and Coran, happy as can be.

 

There’s more than one of him with Lance. The two of them grinning at the camera, arm-in-arm, holding up a certificate Keith can’t read. Lance with an arm around Keith’s shoulder and what looks to be ice cream on his nose, Keith with what’s definitely an ice cream cone in his hand. His favorite, Keith decides, is the one of the two of them standing in a kitchen, batter in their hair and flour down their fronts, apparently fighting over who gets to put the cake in the oven.

 

He's smiling when the footsteps come towards him again.

 

“Here.” Lance brought him a glass of water anyway. Of course he did. “You sure you don’t need anything?”

 

Keith rolls his eyes but takes the glass, sipping it mostly just to appease Lance. “I’m sure, Lance. Thanks,” he adds, almost an afterthought. Lance gives him a small smile.

 

“I was thinking about getting that new picture printed and framed,” he says, making Keith turn to him. “The one of us in the park that Hunk took the other day, you know?”

 

He absolutely does not know. Keith swallows hard, turning back to the photos “Ah, you - you should.” Vaguely nauseous, he moves to sit down on the couch, placing the glass on the table and clutching a throw pillow to his chest.

 

“Keith,” Lance says, perching on the armrest next to him. “Keith, are you sure you’re alright? You look pale. And green.”

 

Keith glances over at the clock under the TV -  _10:38 AM_ \- and runs a hand through his hair. “I’m okay, Lance, really.”  _Lie. He’s going to vomit._ “It was just a bad dream.”  _Another lie. This whole thing is the bad dream._ “No big deal.”  _Strike three, you’re out._

 

Lance scoffs lightly. “Nightmares are never ‘just’ anything. But…okay. If you say so.”

 

It’s quiet, for a while, as Allura’s words ring in Keith’s ears, over and over and over.

 

_Potentially fatal._

 

_To either or both of you._

 

 _In through your nose_ , Keith tells himself, breathing in and counting to six.  _Hold for seven. Out through your mouth._

 

It’s so  _domestic_ , this whole thing. With the pictures and the scent of freshly brewed coffee and something like vanilla and this fucking  _throw pillow_ and waking up to Lance’s face first thing in the morning. Keith chews on his lip and closes his eyes. After a moment, Lance pipes up again, never one for drawn-out silences.

 

“D’you want breakfast?” he asks, making Keith’s head swivel toward him. It takes Keith way too long to even process the question, but Lance isn’t perturbed. He stands and starts toward the kitchen, calling over his shoulder as he goes. “What’re you thinkin’ today - pancakes or omelettes?”

 

Keith opens his mouth, makes a strangled noise that Lance thankfully doesn’t seem to hear, and forces himself to say, “Pancakes.” It comes out choked. He goes back to staring at his fingers and picking at a loose thread in his pillow.

 

“Act normal, idiot,” he mutters to himself, releasing his bottom lip from between his teeth, which is replaced with his fingernail. Thing is, he doesn’t know what ‘normal’ is here. Fantasy-him might not act the same as real-him, but he can’t exactly  _ask_  Lance. That’d be rich: “Hey, Lance, how do I usually act in your fantasy world where we’re back on earth and apparently live together?” 

 

He’ll have to find a way to break it to Lance eventually, but for now Keith figures he should focus on how to get through the morning without vomiting.

 

Lance bustles around in the kitchen, humming some song Keith doesn’t recognize, while Keith watches, pulling his legs to his chest and resting his chin on his knees. From the back, this Lance looks exactly like he does in reality, but every time Lance shoots him a concerned look - which is about every twenty seconds - Keith can note all the differences, all over again.

 

Lance not only looks different, but he just… _seems_ different. His presence is off, somehow, like he’s even more vibrant than usual. That doesn’t really make any sense, but neither does this whole thing.

 

Keith sighs, buries his face in his knees. Takes deep, measured breaths and counts to sixty before looking up again. Catches one glimpse of Lance and is halfway up the stairs before he even knows what he’s doing. Lance calls his name from the kitchen, but Keith ignores him.

 

* * *

 

Keith has been standing in the bedroom ( _his bedroom_ ) for the past three minutes, just taking it all in.

  
It really does look like  _his_ , which, Keith thinks, is the weirdest part. With the wall of alien posters that were probably put up for the sheer irony, the stack of movies he doesn’t recall watching but has always wanted to see, the collection of what looks to just be rocks - whether they’re normal, regular old rocks or some type of space rocks, Keith doesn’t know. But either way, this is how he would decorate his room in the castleship if he had the resources.

 

It’s hard to look at, but at the same time, it’s somehow compelling.

 

He can hear Lance bustling around downstairs as he leaves the bedroom and wanders down the hallway, managing to find the bathroom fairly easily. Closing and locking the door behind him, Keith turns the water on in the sink just for the white noise and faces the mirror, finally taking a minute to examine his own appearance.

 

He hasn’t changed much, really. He can’t say why it is that he’s changed in the first place, but fantasy-him actually looks healthier than normal-him. The bags under his eyes are gone, since apparently this version of him can sleep through the night without issue, and his cheeks are fuller. For once, he doesn’t look stressed, even though he certainly feels it.

 

Keith opens the cabinets under the sink, squats down to rummage through them. He’s not sure what he’s looking for, but he digs around just because he can. It’s nothing but soaps and toothpaste and Lance’s skincare products, so he shuts the cabinets and stands back up. Keith splashes cold water on his face, hoping the shock of it will make him stop feeling like he’s going to pass out.

 

He wipes his face with a paper towel from the roll on the counter, runs his fingers through his hair, sighs heavily. He doesn’t want to go back downstairs, but he knows Lance will come looking for him if he doesn’t, and that option sounds even worse. So he doesn’t give himself time to back out, just shuts the water off and drags his feet out of the bathroom and down the stairs.

 

Standing just outside the kitchen, Keith can hear Lance’s voice, his humming having turned to singing. Keith didn’t recognize the tune, but now that he hears the words, he realizes that Lance is singing  _Walking on Sunshine_. Of course. It’s so typically  _Lance_ that Keith almost jerks around and walks right out the front door.

 

Instead, Keith grits his teeth and steps into the kitchen. Lance, who’s just putting a batch of pancakes on a plate, glances over his shoulder when he hears Keith. He manages to mask his concern fairly well, shooting Keith a smile before turning back to the stove, with no break in his singing.

 

Keith drags himself back to the table and drops into a chair, his movements jerky and mechanical. There are practically sirens going off in his head, still not enough to drown out that little niggling voice saying,  _What the hell have you gotten yourself into now, kid?_

 

(The voice sounds suspiciously like Shiro. Keith tells it to shut the hell up.)

 

* * *

 

Keith doesn’t talk much through breakfast, acting like he’s just too tired to hold a proper conversation (which really isn’t that hard). He lets Lance drone on about something he doesn’t quite follow, sipping at his drink and nodding along when he feels he should but thankfully not being forced to participate any more than that. Instead, he spends breakfast thinking up a way of explaining this whole situation to Lance.

 

He manages to scrape through breakfast without incident, but comes up with nothing.

 

He’s already wondering why the hell he volunteered for this when someone else, anyone else, surely could’ve done it better. He’s supposed to treat this delicately, but subtlety has never exactly been his area of expertise. 

 

Lance keeps glancing at him over the island in the kitchen from where he’s putting the plates in the sink. That look of concern he’s been sporting for the past hour is still painted on his face, but Lance has at least stopped asking questions. Though Keith does have a few questions of his own he’d like answered.

 

Unfortunately,  _his_ questions aren’t the kind that can just be asked out of the blue, over a scratched-up kitchen table and shitty K-Cup coffee. 

 

He’s jolted out of his thoughts by Lance’s voice next to him again, Keith not having noticed when the water turned off.

 

“Keith, hey, you with me?”

 

Keith blinks hard, stares blankly up at Lance. It feels like a lie when he says, “Uh, yeah - I’m here.” 

 

Lance slides back into the seat across from him, frowns at him. There’s a stretch of silence that feels much longer than it probably is, then Lance says, “Keith, you - you know you can talk to me if something's up, right? If there’s anything at all you wanna talk about, I’m here.”

 

It sounds a lot like something Lance - the real Lance - has told him, more than once, before. Back when Keith learned about his Galra blood, during the time when Shiro was gone. He’s confided in Lance quite a few times, because Lance makes it so fucking easy.

 

But now - now, the question isn’t whether he can confide in Lance or not. It’s whether Lance will Lance can take it or not. And whether Keith is ready to do this  _now_ or not.

 

The answer is a resounding  _no_ , to both questions.

 

Thing is, this has to be done much more carefully than Keith does almost anything. He can’t just rip the bandage off like he normally would. He needs to learn what he can about this world and then ease into it.

 

Easier said than done.

 

Lance is still looking at him funny.

 

_Oh right._

 

“Uh, yeah, I know. But honestly, Lance, I’m okay,” Keith says, once he remembers what the original question was. He hates lying to him, but it’ll all work out eventually. At least, that’s what he tells himself.

 

“Okay,” Lance says, albeit dubiously. “Right, well, I’m volunteering today, so I should really get ready to go.”

 

 _Volunteering?_ “Oh, uh, okay.”

 

Lance gives him a smile and a quick pat on the hand that was surely  _meant_ to be reassuring. He pushes back his chair and heads up the stairs, waving back at Keith over his shoulder.

 

Now that he's actually eaten something, Keith really might throw up. There's a flutter in his stomach, a tight knot in his chest. His heart keeps skipping beats, anxiety bubbles up inside him, and he thinks he might have a panic attack right here, right now.

 

Maybe he should just get this out as soon as possible. As in, right when Lance comes back down the stairs. At least then he won't have to sit around and wait for his pulse to stop jumping around like a fucking jackhammer.

 

The sooner the better. Once he gets this done, they can go home. And that’s the goal, isn’t it? To get Lance and go home.

 

The sooner the better.

 

Right?

 

Keith’s hands are shaking when Lance comes back downstairs, in a flurry of motion (like Lance should be, like he always should be). Lance is simultaneously shoving a hat on his head and shoving his phone in his pocket as he jumps the last three steps.

 

“I’m heading out!” he says, much louder than necessary.

 

“Wait, Lance, I -”

 

“Nope, can’t talk, already late!”

 

And he’s gone. Out the front door in a frenzy, because apparently he’s late.

 

Keith is left sitting, alone, at the dining table, staring with his mouth still hanging open at the spot on the stairs that Lance had occupied only seconds ago.

 

Figures.

 

* * *

 

Keith sits there for another five minutes because he legitimately cannot process what just happened.

 

Another ten minutes because he doesn’t know what else to do.

 

Two more minutes just because he can, and then he slips out of his chair, just a little dizzy, and -

 

Stands there.

 

And stands there and stands there and stands there and realizes that he has  _not even a hint of a clue_ what he's doing.

 

So he goes exploring.

 

He thinks he’d better map out the house, anyway, so he can at least pretend he knows where he is. And if he finds anything that might help him learn more about this world, then that’s a bonus.

 

The living room and the kitchen come up empty, as does the downstairs bathroom and what Keith assumes is the guest bedroom.

 

The second floor doesn’t go any better - his own bedroom is useless, as is Lance’s, and the office across the hall. There’s nothing to tell him what this world is like.

 

There’s no trace of Voltron, either, Keith notes, which opens a whole other can of worms.

 

 _How did they all meet, if not for Voltron? Did this world just not need saving? Are Allura and Coran still aliens or not? Is_ Keith  _still an alien?_

 

_Wait, that doesn’t make any sense._

 

Keith has to stop thinking about it, there.

 

* * *

 

Keith finds dream-his cell phone after digging through the nightstand in dream-his bedroom.

 

For a moment, he just stares at it, not sure what to do with it.

 

Text messages. Every single one of dream-Keith’s text messages are available to him now.

  
As much as Keith doesn’t want to touch - well, literally anything in this world, he pulls up the messages on the phone and sits, tentatively, on the bed. He hasn’t so much as held a cell phone in…a while, so it takes him a minute to adjust before he clicks on the messages between dream-Keith and Lance and starts reading.

 

He has to scroll up to the beginning of each conversation, but it doesn’t really matter anyway, as it seems, because there’s absolutely nothing important in the texts.

 

_Keith (5:08 PM): hey when do you get home_

 

**Lance (5:14 PM): like 6ish y**

 

_Keith (5:16 PM): just wondering because we’re supposed to go out tonight remember_

 

_Keith (5:16 PM): for dinner_

 

**Lance (5:18 PM): at applebee’s yea ik**

 

_Keith (5:19 PM): good_

 

**Lance (5:22 PM): i can’t believe you thought id forget smthing this important**

 

**Lance (5:22 PM) do u rlly see me this way god keith**

 

**Lance (5:23 PM) do u think our friendship means nothing to me**

 

**Lance (5:25 PM) god im so offended**

 

**Lance (5:26 PM) youve offended me keith**

 

**Lance (5:33 PM) okay i gtg work calls love u bye**

 

_Keith (5:37 PM) love you too idiot_

 

 

  
**Lance (2:34 AM): yo im so fucking tired**

 

**Lance (2:34 AM): there’s smthing about working the graveyard shift but not actually getting paid that just**

 

**Lance (2:34 AM): rlly tires a guy out**

 

**Lance (2:35 AM): youre probably asleep**

 

**Lance (2:35 AM): like i should be rn**

 

**Lance (2:36 AM): but anyway i need more coffee**

 

**Lance (2:36 AM): gnight love you**

 

_Keith (2:37 AM): thanks for waking me up asshole_

 

_Keith (2:37 AM): work your shift and leave me out of it_

 

_Keith (2:38 AM): love you too_

 

 

**Lance (4:11 PM): keith**

 

**Lance (4:11 PM): whats the last item on this list**

 

**Lance (4:11 PM): ur handwriting is shit**

 

_Keith (4:14 PM): fuck you and it’s yogurt i think_

 

**Lance (4:15 PM): oh yea i see it now thnx**

 

**Lance (4:16 PM): see you in like 15 love you bye**

 

_Keith (4:19 PM): love you too make sure you get the coffee yogurt_

 

**Lance (4:21 PM) like i could ever forget**

 

Even their  _texts_ are domestic.

 

Keith wastes a good two hours reading through the texts, but ultimately finds nothing important. The only things he notices are that they text almost constantly and that the apparent tradition of ending every conversation with  _love you_ is, in fact, a tradition that extends all the way back to the first recorded conversation of two hours worth of text conversations.

 

Facts that are, as it turns out, useless.

 

He skims through his texts with other people, too, but Shiro, Pidge, and Hunk’s messages come up no more helpful than Lance’s, and he gives up after those.

 

It’s like this world just doesn’t keep track of anything that could actually be important. There’s so much useless, random shit lying around, but absolutely nothing that would actually help Keith.

 

It’s irritating. It’s irritating, and it’s frustrating, and it’s -

 

It’s typical, really.

 

Things always go like this, with a big problem and not a bit of evidence to point toward a solution. It doesn’t matter what the problem is - it’s the same story no matter what. Keith got tired of it long, long ago, but here he is yet again.

 

He’s just about ready to throw the phone into a wall, but then it chimes.

 

**Lance (4:03 PM): on my way home**

 

**Lance (4:03 PM): bringing food bc i dont feel like cooking**

 

**Lance (4:03 PM): and knowing you you probably havent eaten anything since breakfast**

 

**Lance (4:03 PM): im thinking subway i’ll get ur usual**

 

**Lance (4:04 PM): see you in 20 love you**

 

The last texts blinks up at Keith, glaringly bright. 

  
  
Not for the first time since Lance was captured, and definitely not for the last, Keith wishes things he had a time machine so he could go back and  _fix this._

 

His hands shake when he types.

 

_Keith (4:08 PM): love you too_

 

* * *

 

Lance gets back in twenty-three minutes exactly. Keith didn’t time it on purpose, but, well.

 

He doesn’t know what his “usual” is, but he doesn’t really care, either. He only half-ate breakfast this morning, and his stomach has finally settled - just enough for him to choke down his dinner, but nothing more.

 

Lance tells him all about his volunteering, and Keith tries his best to follow along, but all he really gathers from it is that Lance really likes volunteering. He manages to dodge Lance’s offer of a movie night, claiming to be tired since he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. It’s admittedly true, though  _last night_ , Keith was on the observation deck in the castleship.

 

It’s only five, but Keith is ready to pass out. He tells Lance he’s going to get a shower and go to sleep, and Lance takes it with not so much as a pause.

 

He heads to the upstairs bathroom, turns on the shower faucet, and pulls himself up to sit on the counter.

Closing his eyes, Keith takes a deep breath and leans back against the mirror, letting his head drop forward and his hair drape over his face. The water in the shower steams up the rest of the room, the thin plastic curtain doing next to nothing to keep the fog from spreading. Keith pulls on the ends of his hair, then pushes it back and steps away from the sink. He strips quickly, avoiding his reflection, and climbs into the shower.

 

The water is hot enough to burn. Keith leaves it like that and scrubs at his skin until it’s raw.

 

* * *

 

That night, Keith dreams of soldiers and fighting and missions-gone-wrong.

 

Allura’s words are layered over his dreams, a continuous mantra of  _potentially fatal major consequences don’t forget._

 

He jerks awake in a cold sweat at around four in the morning. He doesn’t get back to sleep until six.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**_Day 2_ **

 

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Lance says, his cheery tone in sharp contrast with the way Keith feels, “go take a shower. We’ve gotta go in forty.”

 

“Go - go where?” Keith asks. He barely made it downstairs just five minutes ago, and now he has to go somewhere else? He feels scratchy, like an old CD. Like someone could hit play and he’d skip.

 

Lance gives an exaggerated eyeroll, replies, “We’re meeting up with the others today, remember? For brunch? At Coco’s?”

 

“Oh, right,” Keith says, because  _obviously_ he just blanked for a second, that’s all. (And of course they have plans today, since the universe has already established that it despises Keith. So now Keith can fuck up in front of the others, too.)

 

_Wait. The others?_

 

The rest of the team is here, then. Unless Lance is referring to some weird kids he doesn’t know, but that doesn’t make any sense. Granted, none of this makes any sense, but, well, here they are.

 

Lance says his name again, and Keith looks up, rubbing at his eyes with his sleeve. “Look, Keith, if you’re not up for it, we can cancel. Do this another time.” He’s trying to hide it, but Lance is clearly disappointed, and even in this universe, Keith is terrible at saying no to Lance.

 

“No, no, it’s cool, I’m fine,” Keith says hurriedly, much preferring to go out and deal with their friends than stay in and deal with Lance’s pouting. Because he  _will_ pout. And Keith is very much not up for that. “I’ll go shower and get ready to leave, okay?”

 

He’s halfway to the staircase, and Lance is still saying, “You really don’t have to -”

 

“Lance.” Keith turns on his heel to give Lance a hard stare. “Stop it. We’re going.” He doesn’t wait for a response before taking the stairs two at a time just so he can get the hell out of there.

 

* * *

 

Lance drives a convertible, because of fucking course he does. Keith can’t decide if he should lower or raise his expectations about this place, and about this Lance.

 

The car ride is blessedly conversation-less; Lance turns the radio on low and entertains himself by singing along, leaving Keith to stare out the window and ponder how he’s meant to get through brunch with the whole team when he barely got through breakfast with just Lance. The scenery outside the passenger-side window flies by, but Keith can’t focus on it, his head full of worst case-scenarios of his and Lance’s inevitable ‘none of this is real’ conversation.

 

Clad in clothes he’s never worn before, sitting in a car he’s never touched before, watching a city he’s never seen before go by, Keith wishes, not for the first time, for some kind of miracle. A time machine, perhaps, or a magic wand. He’s a little desperate.

 

He’ll settle for a memo on  _What to Expect When Your Teammate/Sort-of-Friend Who You Maybe Occasionally Think About Kissing Creates an Entire Alternate Universe in His Head_ , really.

 

Keith doesn’t even notice that the car is stopped until Lance has gotten out, come all the way around to the passenger door, and practically dragged him out of the car. Keith stumbles along with Lance gripping his wrist and saying something about Keith making them late. He runs a hand through his hair and steels himself as Lance opens the door to the restaurant and ushers Keith inside with a hand on the small of his back. Keith’s skin burns everywhere Lance touches it.

 

The inside of the restaurant is just that, the inside of a restaurant. It’s on the smaller side, with a slightly off-putting color scheme of woody brown and teal, and Keith can see why Lance and the rest of the team would like this place. It’s quiet and a little more secluded, but it still has…character, he supposes.

 

(It's awful, really, and that's definitely why the team likes it.)

 

Keith scans the restaurant for the others, spots them crowded together at a table near the back. From Keith’s vantage point, they don't look much different, either. Shiro’s telltale shock of white hair is no longer there, reminding Keith of way back when he first met the man, Pidge isn't wearing her glasses, though Hunk actually does wear a pair of black frames. Allura and Coran’s Altean marks are gone, but Keith has no idea whether they just didn’t exist in the first place or they’re covered up, and all of them are dressed in clothes that don't look like they've been worn for six months straight. But otherwise, it's the exact same group.

 

Keith can feel a headache coming on as Pidge, who's facing him and Lance, notices the two of them and waves them over. Lance, having just finished explaining to the hostess that they already had a table, bounds over to the team and slides into the seat next to Hunk, leaving Keith to sit between Pidge and Shiro, directly across from Lance.

 

There’s a chorus of  _hey_ ’s and  _hello_ ’s. Keith muddles through the greetings, head spinning as Shiro claps him on the shoulder and Allura shoves a menu at him. He stares at it, the words floating up off the page and swirling in the air. Keith rubs his temples, inadvertently drawing the attention of not only Lance, but now the whole table.

 

“You doing okay, Keith?” Shiro asks, and Keith can feel everyone’s gazes on him.

 

He doesn’t look up, focusing instead on trying to puzzle out the words on the menu. He’s a shitty liar, that’s been proven on many occasions, but Lance seems to be believing him so far, so he replies, “Yeah, I’m good,” and catches Lance’s eye, silently pleading for him to change the subject.

 

Lance comes through for him, thankfully, saying, “Keith’s just bitter that his favorite got booted last night.” Apparently, Lance is a fantastic liar, though it’d be nice if Keith could understand what he even meant.

 

“You two are  _still_ keeping up with that show?” Hunk wrinkles his nose and everyone laughs lightly, save for Keith. No one seems to realize that he’s not following the conversation, which allows Keith to zone out, since everybody else is just rambunctious enough to make up for Keith’s lack of input. He breathes easier, but only just.

 

The waiter comes and takes their orders, and Keith just orders the same as Lance, despite not having paid enough attention to know what Lance asked for. The conversation turns from whatever show it is that he and Lance apparently watch, to some weird story of Coran’s, and then to -

 

“Hey, you guys remember that time when we got into it with those weird red aliens who wanted to ‘borrow’ Pidge?” Keith jolts at Hunk’s words, making both Shiro and Pidge shoot him a look, equal parts concerned and exasperated. He mouths a quick apology to each of them before turning back to Hunk, who takes no notice of Keith’s thoughts going a mile a minute and continues on.

 

“I still can’t believe that they thought ‘borrowing’ a  _person_ was an actual option,” Hunk says incredulously, with air-quotes on  _borrowing_.

 

Lance snorts. “They probably didn’t realize that Pidge was even a person. I mean, I thought she was a gremlin when I first met her.” His snickers are soon cut off with a yelp, and he leans down to rub at his ankle and glares at Pidge, who pretends not to see him.

 

“It still wasn’t as bad as that one time -” she starts innocently, and is cut off by Lance.

 

“Nope, no, we agreed never to bring that up!”

 

Keith’s head swivels back and forth like he’s watching a tennis match, and he actually _knows_ this story. This happened, in both realities. Which means that Voltron happened in this reality, as well. They did go to space and they did save the world and that was how they came together.

 

This world has a lot of similarities with reality. Keith wonders if that knowledge will prove helpful or not, but he makes a mental note of it regardless.

 

“Oh, Keith,” Coran says, and Keith steels himself, “don’t you recall the time when -”

 

But, by the grace of some higher power Keith doesn’t even believe in, their waiter comes back just in time to cut off Coran’s question. Keith huffs a sigh of relief under his breath, because chances are _, no, he does not recall._

 

The waiter places all of their plates on the table; Keith takes one look at his - French toast, scrambled eggs, and bacon - and pushes back from the table, mumbling something about a bathroom, and walks quickly toward the sign across the restaurant that reads  _MEN’S._

 

Keith shoves past the door, which swings back into place behind him, heads straight to the first stall, and drops to his knees, way past caring if he gets his jeans wet. He’s vomiting, finally, hunched over a toilet in a dingy public restroom, throat burning and stomach clenching.

 

Oh, what a life he’s living.

 

As quick as it came, the wave of nausea has passed, probably due to the lack of any actual substance in his stomach to throw up. Keith can’t bring himself to leave the stall, though, or even to sit up properly. Not until he’s totally sure he’s not going to puke again.

 

Wiping his mouth with one hand, still clutching the edge of the toilet with the other, Keith lifts his head and stares at the tiles on the wall. He counts to twenty, then reluctantly rocks back on his heels, stays there for another twenty seconds. Pushes to his feet and leans on the stall divider, face sheened with sweat.

 

He hates this. It’s only been one full day, and he hates this more than anything.

 

Eventually, Keith regains his bearings enough to totter out of the stall, still feeling a little like he’s just gotten off one of those ridiculous spinny carnival rides. He drags his feet over to one of the sinks, turns the water on, and shoves his hands under the spray after a brief second where he seriously considered simply putting his whole head under the water and waiting to drown.

 

Keith goes through the motions of washing and drying his hands, then yanks a bunch of paper towels out of the dispenser and wipes the sweat from his forehead. Pats his hair down, rolls his shoulders back, sets his jaw, and walks back out into the restaurant.

 

* * *

 

And directly into Shiro.

 

As soon as Keith pushes the bathroom door open, he bumps right into Shiro. He would’ve ended up flat on his ass, had his reflexes not been as sharp as they are, but he catches himself on the water fountain to his right and has untangled the buttons on his flannel from Shiro’s sleeve fairly quickly. He pushes his bangs out of his eyes as he ducks away in a way he hopes was inconspicuous enough for it not to be questioned. Keith thinks he’s in the clear for a second, already muttering an apology and heading back toward the table.

 

But no, of course not.

 

“Wait a second, Keith.” Shiro stops him before he can get very far, catching his wrist and turning him around. “I know you said you were okay out there, but…you just seem kind of off. You’re sure you’re alright?”

 

Keith is trembling.. He stares at Shiro, eyes flicking over his face, noting the little changes in his appearance  - it’s not just the hair, nor the prosthetic arm that Keith is only just now noticing doesn’t look quite like it normally does (it’s shaped just a little different, laced with blue and gold instead of purple. Altean tech, Keith assumes). It’s the hint of a sparkle in his eyes, like Keith used to see all the time before -

 

Before. Just before.

 

This world, apparently, is post-Voltron, but this Shiro reminds him of the Shiro he knew way back when, clad in jeans and a t-shirt, looking just like the nerdy big brother Keith always saw him as.

 

Keith swallows hard, despising every second of this, chokes out, “It’s nothing, I just - just had a bad night.” That's believable enough, right?

 

Shiro purses his lips, but accepts Keith’s answer. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

 

 _Just like old times._ “I’d rather not,” Keith replies, pulling his wrist out of Shiro’s grip to fold his arms over his chest. “It’s not a big deal, Shiro.”

 

He’s waiting for Shiro to call him out like he always does - he never buys Keith’s bullshit - but Shiro smiles at him and says, “Alright, kiddo. Go on back to the table then, tell them I’ll be out in a minute.”

 

Shiro walks into the bathroom, patting Keith on the shoulder as he goes, and Keith finds himself just staring at a crack in the wall in front of him. Ridiculously enough, tears burn behind his eyes; Keith feels like he’s a little kid again, crying over some minor inconvenience just because he was allowed to. But he refuses to cry because he’s nineteen years old, for christ's sake - give or take, at least - and he’s  _not_ going to break down in the back hallway of a restaurant.

 

Keith blinks back the tears and drags his feet over to the table.

 

When he gets back, talk has turned away from their adventures and to the events of the past week. Pidge is on about her latest invention, with Hunk chiming in every so often. The others glance at him as he sits down again, and Keith is sure he looks like complete and utter shit, but none of them say anything, not even to ask him about his week. From the way Lance smiles at him from across the table, he knows Lance must’ve said something to them, told them to back off. Keith mouths  _thank you_ and tries to focus on getting food in his stomach without hurling again.

 

Lance nods in acknowledgement, then turns back to the conversation. Keith digs his fingernails into his palm, just deep enough to sting, and shoves a forkful of eggs in his mouth just to have something to do with his other hand.  

 

All in all, brunch goes…about as well as can be expected.

 

The communal agreement to leave Keith alone continues, thankfully, throughout the rest of the meal, though Keith does try to follow the conversation. Unfortunately, nothing else important is said.

 

Keith has to force his feet to stay where they are, because his  _fight or flight_ instinct is bubbling up again, and  _fight_ doesn’t really seem to be much of an option right now.

 

* * *

 

By the time Keith and Lance arrive back at the house, Keith has chewed a hole in his lip and practically tugged his hair out of his head. Lance has finally stopped shooting him weird looks every couple minutes, apparently having accepted the fact that this is just going to be a shitty day, and Keith spends the second car ride just like he did the first, watching the scenery go by and hoping Lance doesn’t try to talk to him. Which, thankfully, he doesn’t.

 

As they pull up to the house, Keith can’t help but gape. When leaving, Keith hadn’t even noticed what the house looked like from the outside, but now -

 

The house isn’t in an actual neighborhood, settled instead at the end of a secluded pathway, with a good two or three acres of land on the property, which then tapers off into trees. It’s painted light blue and it’s not exactly grand, but it’s not small either, with big, shuttered windows, a glass door, and a set of silver wind chimes in the front.

 

Keith slips out of the car, wondering where he and Lance got the money for a place this nice.

 

Government funding, probably.

 

Keith tries to open the door and realizes, belatedly, that he doesn’t actually have keys. Lance is a little slower than he was to get up to the door, but Keith is inside shortly.

 

The air feels different, in the house. Heavier, almost. Keith simultaneously hates and loves the idea of this house.

 

In some weird fantasy world of Lance’s, he and Lance live together.

 

It’s a scary thought, but Keith revels in it, anyway.

 

His plan is to go directly up the stairs before Lance can even consider saying anything to him, but Lance is quicker.

 

“Keith, hey, would you c’mere for a second?” he says, just as Keith’s foot hits the first step. He’s moving toward the couch, and Keith feels like he’s being called into the guidance counselor for the billionth time.

 

Keith takes a deep, chagrined breath. He still wants to bolt, but he drags himself over to the couch.

 

“What’s up?” he asks, perched on the edge of the couch, the picture of casualness.

 

Lance leans forward, elbows on his knees. “I just wanted to, uh…check in, I guess. You’re acting sort of weird, and I heard you up last night. Is everything okay, Keith?”

 

Keith wants to scoff, wants to tell him that  _no, nothing is okay and I don’t know what I’m doing._  Wants to spin it around on Lance, ask him why exactly  _Lance_ was up late enough to hear Keith at four in the morning.

 

But it’s not worth it, he decides, because he has to get this right. Just like any mission, there’s no room for mistakes and fighting with teammates is just about the least helpful thing ever.

 

“Everything’s fine, Lance, really,” Keith says, doing his very best to pretend he’s not contemplating punching a wall. “You don’t have to worry.”

 

“But that’s, like, my job.”

 

That’s…kind of true. In the real world, Lance tends to be the first to notice when people aren’t okay, because his default setting is  _worried_.

 

Before Keith can dig himself out of this pitfall of thoughts, Lance is saying something else.

 

“Are you having nightmares again? Is that why you were up last night?”

 

Well, technically, yes. But not in the way Lance thinks.

 

“No.”

 

“You’re sleeping okay? Do you need -”

 

“I’m sleeping just fine, Lance.”

 

“Okay, well - are you upset about something? You’ve been distant.”

 

“No.”

 

  
“Did I do something? Are you mad at me or something?”

 

“ _No_.”

 

Lance is way too relieved at this. Like Keith could ever  _really_ be mad at him.

 

“Do you -”

 

“Lance, please -”

 

“- wanna play cards?”

 

Keith stops.

 

This, he can do. This is easy. This is normal. He can play cards with Lance, like friends do, in this crazy fake reality where they probably have an actual set of earth cards.

 

Lance is smiling at him, a hint of apology in his gaze. An olive branch.

 

“Sure,” Keith says, and smiles back.

 

* * *

 

They do, in fact, have an actual set of earth cards.

 

The last time Keith played cards with Lance, they had to use -

 

No, nope, not doing this. Not thinking about that, not going there.

 

Right now, Lance is setting the cards up for  _War_ , which, easy enough. All he has to do is flip cards and be aware enough to process whether or not the number on his card is higher than Lance’s.

 

He likes this game. It’s simple, straightforward.

 

Hopefully, Lance, whose enthusiasm has to be at a ten for literally everything, will be too engrossed in the game to pay that much attention to Keith.

 

For once, by some universal  _miracle_ , Keith gets exactly what he wants.

 

* * *

 

An hour passes. Two hours.

 

The whole time, Keith’s anxiety has been burning in his chest, periodically boiling over and making his breath quicken and his hands shake. Tears prickle in his eyes every so often, but he manages to keep it all at bay. Lance either doesn’t notice or just doesn’t comment.

 

Lance leaves to get something to eat at 3:42.

 

And Keith finally loses it.

 

Lance said he was going to make a sandwich, so it’ll be a few minutes before he comes back in. Keith lets the panic rise from his chest and settle in his throat, pulse racing and heart pounding.

 

He still has to keep this under-wraps, so he twists his fingers into his shirt, breathes in through his nose, and breathes out through his mouth. He’s on the edge of  _full-blown panic attack_ , and he grasps futilely at the edges of his sanity.

 

He is not hyperventilating. His breathing is uneven, but he is not hyperventilating.

 

This room feels too small and too big at the same time. Everything is so much, too much.

 

The fabric of Keith’s shirt is soft. He focuses on that, searching for something to ground him. Catches his bottom lip between his teeth and clamps down.

 

With the taste of metallic blood fresh in his mouth, he comes down.

 

He’s blinking back into the present when Lance walks into the room, two plates in his hands.

 

He feels scratchy and shaky and terrible, but he must not look that bad, because Lance doesn’t even look twice before handing Keith a plate.

 

Which Keith stares at for a long moment.

 

“Uh, Keith?”

 

 _It’s a sandwich, dumbass,_  Keith chides himself.  _Stop staring at it like it’s a time bomb._

 

“Yeah, I’m - I’m here, I’m all good.” _Convincing._ “What are we playing next?”

 

Lance takes his answer at face-value, this time, says something Keith doesn’t quite catch, and starts setting up their next game.

 

Keith breathes in.

 

He’s okay.

 

Breathes out.

 

He’s okay.

 

He picks up his hand of cards when Lance holds it out to him, feels much less confined in this room.

 

And he’s okay.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t sleep well that night, either.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

**_Day 3_ **

 

When the morning finally comes, after a fitful, restless half-sleep, Keith feels jittery.

 

 _I’m going to do it,_ is his very first thought.  _I’m going to tell him today._

 

He can’t keep doing this any longer, can’t keep pretending he belongs here. The illusion isn’t going to last - and even if it would, Lance’s  _life_ hangs in the balance of this. And if Keith has to go on like this for much longer, he’s going to lose his damn mind.

 

Keith takes his time getting up and ready, trying to plan out exactly what he wants to say. He doesn’t even really have his story straight - the nuances of it all are blurring, the details getting lost in translation. He’s got the basics mostly down, though.

 

_Mission gone wrong. Lance captured. Unconscious when rescued. Couldn’t wake him. Sent me into his dream world to pull him back into reality._

 

_Present._

 

The details aren't really necessary anyway, right?

 

Eventually, Keith makes his way downstairs, where Lance sits at the island in the kitchen with a bowl of cereal in front of him, a spoon in one hand and his phone in the other. Lance doesn't even glance at him when he walks in, too invested, seemingly, in whatever he’s looking at on his phone.

 

“Hey,” Keith says. Lance jumps a little, but is otherwise unfazed.

 

“Oh, hey.” A halfhearted wave, then Lance is back to  _tap-tap-tapping_  away.

 

Keith pulls up the seat beside Lance, but doesn't bother getting anything to eat. He'd probably throw it back up anyway. “Is something going on? You seem really into whatever’s on your phone there.”

 

“Oh, uh…” Maybe this isn't the right time, the right day, to tell Lance. He's obviously distracted and Keith needs his full attention. “It’s nothing, just - just my volunteer coordinator. She's flipping out about something - doesn't matter.”

 

“Right.”

 

Lance is doing that thing he does when he’s lying, where he scrunches up his nose, rubs the back of his neck, and avoids eye contact. Keith is  _pretty sure_ they decided there’d be no secrets, and definitely no  _lying,_ between them, but here they are.

 

 _It's not worth it,_ he thinks. Calling Lance on his bullshit is just gonna start a fight and he certainly doesn't need that right now.

 

He’ll leave it, for now.

 

Keith purses his lips, says, “Lance?”

 

“Hm…yeah?”

 

“Can we talk?” It’s a shitty choice of words, he realizes, when Lance looks at him with very,  _very_ thinly-veiled alarm. He backtracks quickly, “It’s nothing bad, Lance, you don’t have to look like that - I just need to talk to you about something.”

 

 _Damn,_ he thinks.  _Can’t call Lance on lying when all you’ve been doing since you got here is lying._

 

“Oh,” Lance says, relief evident in his voice. His phone chimes again and Lance glances at it, then at Keith, then back again. “Uh, yeah, of course we can talk. Just - just give me a few minutes, okay?”

 

Lance is up and walking away before Keith can even reply.

 

“Okay…” Keith says to an empty room, and he’s starting to think this isn’t going to work out so well after all.

 

* * *

 

  
A few minutes turns out to be almost an hour, which Keith spends trying to choke down a bowl of cereal and get his story straight. He gets halfway through the former, and gains little to no traction with the other. All in all, it’s not the best morning he’s ever had.

 

(It’s not the worst, either, which really is a testament to the life he’s lived.)

 

He’s gagging on a spoonful of Lucky Charms when Lance finally comes back into the kitchen, sliding into the chair next to Keith, the picture of nonchalance, like Keith  _h_ _asn’t_ been waiting on him for almost an hour.

 

Because he’s in a bad mood already and it’s not even noon, Keith bites out, “Your volunteer coordinator’s pretty interesting, huh?”

 

Lance gives him a look like he’s not sure he understands the question, then says slowly, “Uh, sure. She’s nice enough, I guess.”

 

Lance doesn’t catch the bitterness in Keith’s tone. Impressively oblivious, as always.

 

“Right,” Keith says, and forces himself to drop it. Lance is still looking at him weird, and he can’t afford to mess this up before he even starts. “Hey, can we - can we take a walk?”

 

“That serious, huh?” Lance laughs this forced little laugh, like he’s trying not to seem worried. He’s failing. Keith pokes his tongue against the side of his cheek and fiddles with his spoon until Lance deflates slightly, holds her hands up in surrender. “Oookay, then. I guess it’s that serious.”

 

The air between them stiffens a little, but Keith jerks out of his seat before it can get any worse. His half-eaten bowl of cereal is left, forgotten, on the counter, as Keith hears Lance scramble up to follow him out the door.

 

Lance catches up to him halfway down the driveway, saying, “Whoa, Keith, wait up!”

 

Keith doesn’t look back at him, but does slow a little to allow Lance to fall into step with him. He turns, at the end of the driveway, to the right, and begins the trek down the road.

 

It’s quiet for a while, because Keith wants,  _needs,_ to get away from the house before he does this and Lance seems to take in Keith’s clenched fists and tight posture and decides he doesn’t want to push him.

 

At least Lance has put his phone away. 

 

He can feel Lance’s eyes on him, as he kicks a pebble down the lane, but Keith refuses to even look at him until the house is entirely out of view. The road is completely empty, aside from the two of them - no one out walking their dog, no cars parked on the curb, not even a squirrel running through the grass. It’d be totally silent, if not for the scuff of their shoes on the pavement.

 

Normally, this is the exact sort of thing Keith would love. Peace and quiet, a secluded area to just wander around with no destination. He’d revel in it, usually.

 

In this case, though, he hates it.

 

There’s nothing to distract him from what has to be done, nothing for Lance to stare at instead of Keith, no way to postpone the inevitable. He almost wishes Lance would pull out his phone again, just so his attention will be elsewhere.

 

This is good, really, if Keith looks at it rationally. It’s better not to be interrupted by nosy neighbors or distracted by cars almost running them over - makes the conversation they’re about to have (as soon as Keith can pull his head out of his ass and get it over with) a lot easier.

 

Rationality, however, went out the window a long while back, which is why they’re here, and why Keith blurts out, “This entire world is a figment of your imagination!”

 

Well, fuck.

 

Silence.

 

And then -

 

“Is that another one of those ridiculous “false reality” theories Pidge is always on about?”

 

_What?_

 

“What?”

 

Lance scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Pidge got you into those now, huh? Is that all we’re out here for, or is there actually something serious? I’ve got shit to do, Keith.”

 

Keith stares at him, more than a little astonished at Lance’s tone. Lance seems not to even have noticed the bite in his own words, or maybe he just doesn’t care. Either way, Keith ends up snapping back before he can stop himself.

 

“Oh, of course, you’ve got  _way_ better things to do! What was  _I_ thinking?” He regrets the words as soon as they come out, but he can’t take it back now.

 

“I actually do, thanks for asking,” Lance says, and this is a brand of condescending that doesn’t come out much but is always worse, even, than many of Lance’s other, less amiable sides. “Seriously, Keith, am I here for a reason or not?”

 

 _Don’t react,_ Keith tells himself.  _Don’t fight back. It’s not worth it. Get back on topic._

 

But nothing ever goes as Keith plans, so what comes out of his mouth is, “Well, you were, but maybe you should just go back to your phone, since it’s obviously more important than me.”

 

“Don’t act like that.”

 

“Act like  _what,_ Lance?” Keith stops in his tracks, whirls on Lance, who stops too but stares up at the sky instead of at Keith.

 

“Like - like this!” Lance gives a vague, wide gesture toward Keith, makes an angry noise in the back of his throat. “Like I’m doing you some  _huge disservice_ or something!”

 

_Stop, stop, stop it, Keith._

 

But that sick thrill is back, and it’s even better because Lance actually _fights back._ Everyone else eventually would just take it and let him run himself dry, but Lance - Lance takes it and gives it right back.

 

And it feels so  _good._

 

“Don’t act like you’re not, then!” Keith bites out, despite the voice in his head. “I’m trying to talk to you, and you’re still thinking about your fucking cell phone!”

 

“Well, it’s nicer than you!” 

 

“Oh, for fuck’s -” He’s cut off by ringing.

 

_Speak of the devil._

 

Lance stops glaring at him in favor of pulling his phone out of his pocket. Keith laughs derisively, says, “Don’t you dare -”

 

Lance holds up a finger to silence him and hits the answer button on the screen. Looks Keith dead in the eye as he says into the phone, “Hey, Kat - no, I’m not busy, just give me a second.”

 

“You’re an asshole.”

 

“I’m going home,” Lance says, fire still bright in his eyes, “and talking to my volunteer coordinator about an upcoming Habitat For Humanity trip.  _You_ can do whatever the hell you want.”

 

Keith doesn’t answer, still caught on the words _upcoming_ and  _trip._ Lance just rolls his eyes again and walks off, chattering away into the phone.

 

The thrill fades.

 

And Keith is left standing alone in the middle of a deserted road, wondering what the hell just happened.

 

* * *

 

He spends the next hour wandering around, trying to cool down and clear his head. When he does go home, he marches straight up to his bedroom and slams the door.

 

He doesn’t apologize.

 

Neither does Lance.

 

* * *

 

There’s a gray notebook in his sock drawer.

 

It’s pretty unremarkable, just a little spiral notebook buried rather inconspicuously under his socks. He wouldn’t have even noticed it, had he had anything better to do than dig around the room in search of this exact sort of thing. Keith picks it up gingerly, holding it like it’s a ticking time bomb.

 

A journal.

 

His journal.

 

_Dreamworld-Keith’s journal._

 

Keith breathes in, traces the outline of the book. Breathes out, runs his fingers along the spiral rings. He almost doesn’t want to open the book, more than a little scared of what it might tell him. But on the other hand…he can’t  _not_ read it.

 

There’s a bookmark stuck about a third of the way into the book. Keith slides his finger between the pages, chews on his bottom lip. Closing his eyes, he flips to the bookmarked page and just stands there for a while. And then when he can’t stand any longer, he sits on the edge of his bed and stares at the wall.

 

The words blur when Keith looks at them. He blinks away the spots in his vision and glares at the pages until they finally make sense.

 

_December 25,_

 

_I had my first proper Christmas today._

_  
_ _Well, not technically. I do remember celebrating Christmas with my dad when I was real little, but it was never like this. It was never a big deal with my dad, not like it was with Lance and the others. We never decorated or made a big deal out of presents or cooked dinner together. And none of my foster families ever made a big deal about Christmas  I’ve never even had a real Christmas tree._

 

_I never got what Christmas was really about until today. Lance invited his family, the whole team, and their families over to spend the day together. It was a little crowded, but it was nice. Lance put on cheesy Christmas songs and we played games and just enjoyed being together. Lance and Hunk kicked everyone’s asses at Charades, but Pidge, Shiro, and Matt creamed us all when we played Pictionary. Everyone brought something for dinner, even though Hunk practically brought enough to feed an entire neighborhood._

 

_We exchanged gifts after dinner. I’m not used to getting anything on holidays, but I got something from all my friends today. Even Matt gave me a couple headbands to replace my old ones, though I think he’s just trying to be nice to me because he’s Shiro’s boyfriend._

 

_I got an alien guide book from Pidge, which had her laughing for a good fifteen minutes. Hunk gave me a set of conspiracy documentaries, which I think was a bit of a joke because he seemed surprised when I thanked him. Shiro tried to make it out like it was no big deal, but he was almost in tears when he gave me this old bracelet that’s been passed down in his family. I tried to tell him to keep it and give it to his kid later on, but he insisted that he wanted to give it to his little brother. I almost cried too._

 

_Lance gave me a necklace. It had little beads for each of our team members, with an infinity sign wrapped around them. He was babbling an unnecessary explanation of the necklace when he gave it to me, but I just hugged him. I actually did cry then._

 

_Nobody laughed. They didn’t laugh and they didn’t tell me to man up, not like people in my old foster homes used to. I’ve never had people I could cry in front of before. It’s nice to have that now._

 

 _My_ _team_   _friends_ _family taught me what Christmas is today. I’ve never been more grateful for a group of people in my life._

 

_So today was nice. And Lance promised me hot chocolate, so I’m gonna go._

 

There’s no signature at the bottom, no year on the dates. Keith traces the last line of the page, and then drops the book on the bed because  _no, no, no, he cannot do this._

 

But within seconds, he’s flipping to the beginning of the journal.

 

_March 4,_

 

_I’m not really sure why I let Lance talk me into this. He thinks I’m having a harder time than I really am. He thinks my nightmares are worse than they are. He thinks I can’t handle it._

 

_He’s wrong. But I figured it would get him off my case, at least. So here we are._

 

_I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be doing with this, but Lance keeps saying to write what I feel._

 

There’s a bunch of scratched out words, then:

 

_I feel like this is a waste of time._

 

Keith breathes in deep, holds it for a long moment, and flips to the next page.

 

_March 7,_

 

_Lance keeps asking me if I’ve been writing. I wish he wouldn’t, but I know he’s just trying to help me, even though I don’t need help. I’ve gone my whole life without help and I don’t need it now._

 

_Damn. Maybe that’s part of why Lance thinks I do need help._

 

_Lance should worry about himself more. I know he’s been having trouble, but he won’t admit it. I don’t want to push him, but I do worry about him just as much as he does about me. He acts like he’s alright, but I can hear him walking around in the middle of the night sometimes. I’m not sure if I should say something or just let him alone._

 

_At least I can tell him I’ve written something now._

 

The next few entries continue like this. Keith tears through the pages until he finds a longer entry.

 

_April 18,_

 

_Lance and I had a fight today._

 

_It was inevitable, really. A bunch of little things added up after a while, and I’ve never been good at keeping my temper in check. Lance has been treating me like I’m made of glass, and I know I’ve been walking on eggshells around him lately too._

 

_I can’t even remember what started it, but the fight was way worse than our usual arguments. Lance said something that set me off, I snapped at him, and then we were both shouting._

 

_I feel terrible now. I said a lot of things I didn’t really mean and a lot of things I did mean, but shouldn’t have. In the heat of the moment, I told Lance that I wished I’d picked to move in with someone else, anyone else. I didn’t mean it, but I said it. I told him that he’d been doing almost nothing but piss me off lately. I meant that. I hate that I did._

 

_Lance screamed right back at me. He said that it’s been torture to even be around me lately, and I could tell he really meant it. Which is understandable. I kind of hate myself too nowadays._

 

_Lance started crying halfway through the fight, which only pissed me off more, at the time. Now that it’s all over, I don’t even know how I’m supposed to face him tomorrow, knowing that I made him cry. I don’t know how I can fix this. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t really cut it in this case._

 

_Maybe it’ll all just blow over by morning. Maybe I won’t have to fix it at all because it won’t be broken._

 

_I don’t want to lose my best friend._

 

_April 19,_

 

_It all blew over by morning._

 

Tears slide down Keith’s nose, drip onto the bottom of the page, stain the ink on the pages. He doesn’t even know what he’s crying over - the fight he never had, the words he never said, the pain he never felt - but he has to push the book away and rub at his eyes until the tears stop falling.

 

He doesn’t get it. This whole world seems to flip-flop every time Keith thinks he’s got it figured out. One minute it’ll be a fantasy, like it’s everything both Lance  _and_ Keith could’ve asked for, but the next minute Keith is sobbing over a fucking diary entry.

 

When he finally stops crying, Keith picks the book up again.

 

* * *

 

Keith spends an entire four hours reading the journal.

 

It takes much longer than it should, what with him breaking down in tears every so often. He learns a hell of a lot more about this world, about Lance’s view of him, about _Lance_ , than he ever wanted to.

 

They’re even closer than Keith had originally thought. If the journal is anything to go by, the two of them do practically everything together, tell each other practically everything. Nothing is too private when it comes to Lance and Keith, in this world.

 

With each entry, memories Keith has never actually experienced flood into his head. He’s reliving things he didn’t live through in the first place, all the ups and downs he and Lance apparently have been through together.

 

They’re just words on a page, but they make him feel like he’s actually a part of this world.

 

He’s not sure if it’s a good thing or not.

 

Either way, he reads the entire journal twice more and doesn’t fall asleep until four in the morning.

 

* * *

 

He dreams of artificial memories, unsaid words, and emotions he wishes he could’ve felt.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**_Day 4_ **

 

“Hey, Keith, I’m heading out,” Lance says as he steps down the last stair, while Keith is halfway through breakfast. “Shiro will be here in half an hour.”

 

Keith stops with a spoonful of cereal halfway to his mouth. “Uh - what?”

 

“Oh, don't tell me you forgot.” Lance shoots him an exasperated look when Keith doesn't deny it. “Seriously? You're spending the day with Shiro, remember? And I'm going out with Hunk?”

 

Keith does not remember. “Oh, right,” he says anyway, shoving his spoon in his mouth so he doesn't have to say anything more.

 

Lance shakes his head, but ultimately lets it go. He's already dressed, in dark jeans and a blue button down, with a jean jacket that Keith is pretty sure is his own on top. He looks nice. Keith wonders what exactly he got all dressed up for, then decides he doesn't want to know. The words  _upcoming Habitat for Humanity trip_ ring in his head.

 

“You'll be fine until Shiro gets here, yeah?” Lance asks in this faux-offhand kind of way.

 

“Why wouldn't I be?”

 

“I dunno, just -” Lance shifts awkwardly, stares at him for a minute. He seems to balk a little at the expressions on Keith’s face and looks away. “Never mind. I gotta go.”

 

“Have fun,” Keith says drily. Suddenly his breakfast doesn't look so appetizing anymore.

 

He can feel Lance’s eyes on him again, but he stares instead at his spoon. Lance says, slowly, just a little bitterly, “Ooo-kay, then,” and the words  _don't be like that_ are buried in the undertone.

 

“I'll see you later, Keith.” Keith doesn't give him so much as a glance when Lance walks out the door.

 

In fact, he calls, “Enjoy your day off!” after him and feels a sick satisfaction when Lance slams the door just a bit harder than necessary.

 

* * *

 

Shiro does arrive a half hour later. Keith is still sitting in the exact same spot as he was when Lance left.

 

The doorbell rings once, but before Keith can even consider getting up to open the door, or at least telling Shiro that it's unlocked, he hears the knob turn. Figures.

 

“You two really should stop leaving your door unlocked,” Shiro says in lieu of an actual greeting, stepping into the house and toeing off his shoes.

 

Keith stares at him from the table, his brain half-blank. He feels just a little numb to all this, but he gives Shiro a small, forced wave.

 

Shiro furrows his brow at him, walking over to join him at the table. “Hey, are you alright?”

 

“Fine,” Keith says, running a tired hand down his face. He wonders how soon  _upcoming_ is. “It’s nothing, Shiro, just a stupid fight with Lance. It’ll pass.”

 

“Did something happen between you two?” Shiro seems almost overly curious, like there’s something specific he’s waiting for Keith to say.

 

“No, no, it’s - it’s dumb. It’s not a big deal.”

 

Shiro seems unconvinced, but he replies, “If you say so,” and lets it go. But Keith can still feel the man’s eyes on him, and he’s struck with the inexplicable urge to tear his own damn hair out.

 

He wishes Lance and Shiro both would stop treating him like he’s made of glass. Like he’s some sort of doll that’ll break if they hold him too tightly. It’s infuriating, it’s degrading, and it’s  _unnecessary._ He’s not going to crack, he’s not going to fall apart at the seams. He’s  _fine._

 

“I’m gonna take a shower,” Keith mumbles, and pushes away from the table.

 

He walks up the stairs feeling like today isn’t going to be as fun as it was supposed to be.

* * *

 

Keith takes the longest shower he possibly can without Shiro coming and banging on the door, partially because he just doesn’t want to go back to Shiro but mostly out of pure spite.

 

He doesn’t have a right to be this angry. He doesn’t even know  _why_ he’s this angry. But even though he knows he’s overreacting, he can’t make himself calm down.

 

The past few days are a little hazy, actually. He can’t even fully remember what went down between him and Lance. Or how bad it was. The only thing he can recall, clearly, is the anger.

 

Shiro has moved to the couch by the time Keith makes his way downstairs, watching what looks to be reruns of  _Friends._ Even now, Keith laughs at him.

 

“You’re such a nerd,” he says from behind the couch, making Shiro jump much higher than he thought he would.

 

_Right. Trauma._

 

Shiro recovers quickly, shooting Keith a good-natured smile. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” He waves Keith over and Keith rolls his eyes but takes a seat by Shiro.

 

“Is this what we’re doing all day, watching old episodes of  _Friends?_ ” Keith asks.

 

Shiro glances at him and immediately starts backpedaling. “I mean, no, we don’t have to. Is there something -”

 

“No, it’s fine, I’d rather just stay at home anyway.”

 

“Okay,” Shiro says, and leaves it at that.

 

* * *

 

Keith falls asleep curled into his pseudo brother’s side, halfway through the fifth episode.

 

* * *

 

Shiro lets him sleep until 2:30, before nudging Keith awake.

 

“Mm…wha’?” Keith blinks his eyes open, groaning as he sits up and rubs at the kink in his neck from sleeping on Shiro’s shoulder.

 

“You fell asleep a while back. I let you sleep because you look like you’ve been awake for like three days.” Shiro rolls his shoulder a little, but otherwise seems totally okay with having been drooled on. “Are you alright, Keith? And I mean  _really_ alright _._ ”

 

There’s a part of Keith that really,  _really_ wants to say no. Because he’s not alright, in any way, no matter how many times he lies, to others and to himself. He’s never felt less alright, and he hates that he’s lying to both Shiro and Lance, but he can’t tell them anything else.

 

He doesn’t even know what he’d be telling them. He’s not okay, but  _why?_ How the hell would he explain this one?

 

He has no idea, so he just doesn’t.

 

“I’m okay, Shiro, promise.” Keith’s stomach twists at his own words, but he ignores the little twinge of guilt. To make it more believable, he adds, “I’ve been having a little trouble sleeping, sure, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. I’ll be fine.”

 

It doesn’t sound real, to Keith’s ears, but Shiro nods in acceptance. Dropping the topic, he gives a small hum and says, “You know, I’ve been meaning to ask - how are things going?”

 

“…Going?”

 

“Yeah. With what we talked about a couple weeks ago?”

 

Keith furrows his brow, silently pleading for someone to spell this out for him. Maybe if he just plays dumb (which won’t be all that hard), Shiro will give him something to work with here. “Uh…could you be more specific?”

 

“Keith,” Shiro says softly, placatingly, giving him a mock-exasperated look. “You don’t have to put on an act for me. Or him, for that matter.”

 

_Him?_

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It’s the truth, but Keith plays it off like he’s just denying it (whatever  _it_ is), pretending, being difficult. He flips his bangs out of his eyes, folds his arms over his chest.

 

Shiro makes a noise somewhere between a sigh and a laugh, puts a hand on Keith’s shoulder. Keith tenses, for a split second, before forcing himself to relax (this is  _S_ _hiro_ , he can’t flinch every time he’s touched). Fortunately, Shiro either doesn’t notice or just chalks it up to nerves. Whatever the case, he doesn’t call Keith on it. “Seriously, Keith, have you told Lance how you feel yet?”

 

_How he…feels?_

 

“Um,” Keith says, “no?”

 

Shiro looks disappointed. Keith really can’t figure out what he’s done to cause this.

 

“You know he’s going to realize eventually, don’t you? And even if he doesn’t feel the same way, it won’t ruin your friendship. Lance would never let your feelings for him ruin your friendship."

 

Oh.

 

“You can’t control the fact that you’re in love with him.”

 

_Oh._

 

Shiro keeps talking, but Keith isn’t listening. Or breathing, he thinks. He can’t think straight and he can’t move and he can’t focus enough to figure out what the fuck Shiro is saying because fantasy-him is in love with Lance.

 

_Fantasy-him is in love with Lance._

 

How does that happen? How does that work, exactly? How even is it that this version of him, this figment of a boy’s imagination, even has the depth of emotion to fall for someone? To fall for  _Lance?_

 

The more important question, though, is  _why?_

 

Why is there a version of him, created by Lance, himself, who’s in love with Lance?

 

Does that mean - no. Not going down that road.

  
See, Keith knows that his feelings for Lance - the real Lance,  _his Lance_  - aren’t exactly setting the standard for  _platonic._ Really, he does. If he’s been ignoring it, shoving it aside to make room for all the other shit he has to deal with, then, well, that’s just part of the job description. He’s a soldier, whether that’s the technical term or not, and soldiers don’t have time for feelings.

 

Feelings don’t win the war.

 

That doesn’t mean he hasn’t  _wanted to._ He’s spent the past few months  _wanting to._ He's been teetering on the edge of  _almost_ since he first looked at Lance and thought,  _I’d spend the rest of my life with you if you let me._ Even more so since the time that they -  _no. Not a good path, either._

 

Thing is, it wouldn't matter if Lance would let him. Circumstance wouldn't.

 

Sometimes he wonders what things would be like if he'd met Lance under different circumstances. Not exactly  _better_ ones, but…normal ones. If they hadn't met at the damn Galaxy Garrison, then perhaps when they did meet, the hatchet that was Lance’s grudge against Keith wouldn't have already buried itself a mile deep into Lance’s chest.

 

Maybe they could've met in a regular old high school, where they were lab partners or they happened to sit next to each other in math class and got to talking. Or maybe they would've met at a party, where Keith had practically glued himself to the wall and Lance decided to see if he could get the weird, broody kid to open up.

 

Perhaps they would've met years later in life, when they were both older and more mature and comfortable in their own skin. They would've caught each other’s eyes at a faculty mixer or the like, hit it off, made plans to hang out sometime. And the rest would be history.

 

Turns out destiny had other plans for them.

 

And Keith has never really believed in destiny (at least not until he, Shiro, and three other kids he didn’t really know found a giant, sentient, robot lion in a cave), but some things just aren't meant to be. He's made peace with that. He hangs on to the idea that he and Lance would've worked if the variables had fit together just a little differently, but they're in the middle of a war, and romance doesn't exactly fit into the equation.

 

He wishes Lance could be his - his  _happily ever after,_  or whatever, but fairy tales aren’t real and  _ever after_ doesn’t really work out so happily.

 

He’s okay with that. He has to be okay with that.

 

(And yet, here he is, feeling like the weight of the world has lifted from his shoulders because, even if there is no _happily ever after_  for the two of them, at least there’s a chance, a real chance, that Lance feels the same way.)

 

Before he can dwell on that too long, Shiro’s voice, strangely muffled to Keith’s ears, jolts him back into reality.

 

“-eith? You alright?”

 

He’s not sure how long he’s been standing here. Shiro is looking at him weirdly, worriedly, and Keith really, physically cannot breathe.

 

He’s jerking out from under Shiro’s hand before he can stop himself, though he probably wouldn’t have, anyway, subtlety be damned. Shiro says something that Keith doesn’t quite catch and doesn’t quite care to decipher, but Keith grinds out an apology and some shitty excuse, then he’s gone.

 

He forces himself to walk until he’s out of Shiro’s view, only pausing to fumble with the knob on the front door, then breaks into a run, heading straight into the woods behind the house. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he can’t stop.

 

He keeps running until he can’t run anymore. Until his legs give out completely and he drops to his hands and knees in the dirt. Until all the thoughts fly out of his head and he’s numb to the anxiety building in his chest.

 

And he stays there until his pulse stops racing and his heart climbs down from his throat.

 

It’s a long time before he begins the trek back to the house.

 

* * *

 

He’s in love with Lance.

 

That’s it, there’s no denying it anymore.

 

It hits him, the reality of it all, as he’s walking back to the house with his pants caked in dirt and his face scratched up from running into a branch. His jeans are ripped at the knees from when he stumbled into a bush, and his elbow throbs - he’s not totally sure why, on that one, but he thinks he remembers accidentally slamming it into a tree.

 

All in all, he’s a mess.

 

Keith is absolutely certain that Shiro will have called Lance and Lance will have come running home, despite having been so excited to spend the day with Hunk. Shiro may or may not still be there - Keith really isn’t sure how long it’s been and he doesn’t have his phone, but he knows that Shiro is supposed to be having dinner with the Holts at some point today. Either way, Lance will be waiting for him, pacing back and forth incessantly, with that worried look plastered on his face.

 

He’ll open the door and Lance will immediately start fussing over him - he won’t yell at Keith for scaring him, but the concern lacing his every word will be even worse.

 

He might not be certain of much anymore, but this scenario is practically set in stone.

 

And sure enough, this is exactly what he’s met with when he opens the front door.

 

“Keith!” Lance is at his side the moment Keith steps into the house. His hands are everywhere, smoothing Keith’s clothes and messing with his hair and assessing his injuries. Keith lets him, already resigned to sitting through this and too tired to even bat his hands away.

 

Keith shuts the door behind him, avoiding Lance’s eyes all the while. Lance has him by the wrist before he can protest, pulling him towards the living room. Their fight yesterday is, seemingly, forgotten, under the circumstances.

 

“Where the hell have you been, Keith? What the hell happened to you?” Lance pushes him, gently, onto the couch, sits down next to him. Carefully, he brushes his thumb over the cut on Keith’s cheek; his finger comes back smeared with blood. He’s babbling, like he always does when he’s nervous or worried or scared, which is almost,  _almost_ comforting, just because it’s so normal. “Shiro called me and he was freaking out, saying something about you running off and not being able to find you, and - and you left your phone here so we couldn’t call you. I - I was so worried, Keith, you can’t  _do_ that -”

 

“M’sorry,” Keith says dully, half-numb. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

 

He stares blankly at one of the tears in his jeans. Now that his adrenaline has died out, Keith is just about ready to crash; he’s bleary-eyed and just a little bit delirious, and Lance seems to pick up on it. His voice softens a little.

 

“Hey, it’s okay,” he murmurs, even though it’s most definitely not okay. “Just go take a shower and get out of those clothes, then we’ll get you patched up, yeah?”

 

Keith nods mechanically, not even totally sure if he’s breathing or not. Everything about this feels so wrong - not only this _thing_ with Lance, but the world as a whole, as if Keith is watching this all play out from a distance. Watching himself go through the motions like something’s possessed his body and left his mind to enjoy the show. Like he’s only half-grounded in reality, while the rest of him is off in la la land.

 

He doesn’t quite recall how he gets to the bathroom, but one minute he's sitting with Lance and the next he's in the shower, not really even registering the scalding water. He blinks back into reality with his skin bright red and steam billowing around him.

 

His hands are shaking. His elbow and his cheek both sting from the water, but the pain is less grounding than Keith would like. Even his breath trembles.

 

 _Pathetic,_ he scolds himself, leaning against the shower wall. He's completely and totally pathetic.

 

He’s been in denial this long, about his feelings for Lance, but now…

 

_You can’t control the fact that you’re in love with him._

 

_No. I can’t._

 

Something about this whole thing is really  _off_ , he knows, but he can't put his finger on what it is. His brain is so hazy that his thoughts get jumbled up in his head; he can't figure out what's bothering him because he can't even think straight.

 

He's missing something. Something he used to have, or used to know, that he lost along the way somewhere, somehow. It's like he's trying to put together a puzzle - he has all the pieces but he's never seen the picture on the box.

 

The thoughts are buried deep in his head, the words lodged in the back of his throat, but they evade him still.

 

Keith manages to wash the caked-on dirt off himself and get dressed in the clothes Lance laid out for him. Even the cloth feels funny on his skin, but that, at least, is easily ignored.

 

He wanders back into the living room when he's done, finds Lance still sitting in the living room. Keith starts toward the couch, but then he hears Lance’s voice and stops.

 

“He’s okay, really - well, physically, at least. I mean - yeah, I get that, it’s - Shiro, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here, I -”

 

Keith can only hear Lance’s side of the conversation, and he’s not sure he wants to hear anymore, not with how choked up Lance sounds, like he’s near tears. Or like he’s been crying. Either way, Keith can’t stand to listen any longer, so he walks over to the couch, deliberately making as much noise as he can on the way.  

 

Lance glances over at him, and sure enough, his eyes are red. Damn.

 

 _You caused this,_ says the stupid little voice in the back of Keith’s head. For once, Keith can’t dispute it.

 

“Oh, hey, uh -” Lance sniffles a little, says into the phone, “Shiro, I’ve gotta go.” There’s a pause, and then, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? Yes, I’ll take care of him. Okay. Okay, bye.” A click, and then Lance is turning fully to Keith, and there’s no way in hell Keith can deal with this tonight.

 

“Keith, hey, sit down.” Lance pats the spot next to him. Keith bites back the urge to run and perches carefully on the couch, still totally prepared to bolt. “How’re you feeling?”

 

Keith thinks long and hard about it, comes up with: “Blurry.”

 

Lance nods like this is a completely acceptable answer, replies, “Could be worse, huh?” and then cringes.

 

“I…can’t believe I just said that.”

 

Keith starts laughing. Because this is so fucking messed up, and Lance is simultaneously making it better and worse, and he looks so appalled at himself, and it’s so  _funny._

 

He laughs and laughs until his laughter turns into choked sobs and Lance wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him close. Keith buries his face in Lance’s shirt sleeve as his crying turns just a little hysterical. Lance holds him tight and whispers sweet nothings into his hair, just letting him cry until he can’t cry anymore.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**_Day 5_ **

 

“Keith.”

 

“Mm…”

 

“Keeeeeeith.”

 

“Ungh…”

 

“Keith, come on, wake up.”

 

“Go away.”

 

“Nope. We have somewhere to be.”

 

“…We do?”

 

“As of half an hour ago, yes.”

 

“What?”

 

“It’s a surprise, but you have to get up.”

 

“Don’t wanna.”

 

“Keith.”

 

“No.”

 

“Please?”

 

“No.”

 

“For me?”

 

“…Fine. Just lemme shower first.”

 

“Great!” Lance grins brightly as Keith sits up, bleary-eyed and yawning, and practically skips out of the room, calling over his shoulder as he goes, “Twenty minutes and then we’ll go!”

 

Keith groans, running his hands down his face. He’s tempted to just go right back to sleep, still exhausted from last night’s ordeal - he’s not even sure when he got to bed last night. Or  _how_ , for that matter - but he’s already awake and a little curious about whatever surprise Lance has planned. He drags himself out of bed and over to his dresser, rubbing at his eyes, wonders briefly if he should ask Lance what he’s supposed to wear for this surprise. Decides he doesn’t really care and just grabs a tank top and pants and heads to the bathroom.

 

He makes his shower fairly quick, hoping to actually eat something before Lance drags him out the door. But as soon as he walks through the hallway, with twelve minutes to spare, Lance jumps up from his seat on the couch.

 

“Nope, nope, nope!” He grabs Keith’s wrist and starts pulling him toward the front door, way too chipper for 9:42 in the morning. “No eating, we’re going.”

 

“But you said twenty minutes and it’s only been eight!”

 

“Doesn’t matter, we’re leaving. We’ll get food where we’re going.”

 

Keith doesn’t bother protesting more, just grabs his jacket from the closet on the way - when Lance gets an idea in his head, there’s no point in resisting. And he’s honestly just glad Lance isn’t asking about last night. He stares longingly after the kitchen, but lets Lance pull him out the door.  
  
  
  
The car ride is short, only fifteen minutes or so of Lance humming along to the radio and Keith rolling his eyes at him whenever Lance tried to get him to join in.

 

They pull up to a building Keith is pretty sure he should recognize, but doesn’t. Lance clicks the off button on the radio, cutting off some cheesy pop song that Lance knows all the words to, and bounds out of the car. He’s too late to open Keith’s door for him, but by the time Keith steps out of the car, Lance has already moved to his door just to take his hand and ‘help’ him out. 

 

 _It’s going to be a long day,_ Keith thinks, but it’s more fond than bitter.

 

He practically has to run to keep up with Lance’s pace. Lance keeps looking back at him and grinning like he’s extremely proud of himself, and Keith can’t help but smile back.

 

Until they walk into the building, Lance’s hand still gripping Keith’s.

 

Bowling.

 

Lance dragged him, at not even ten in the morning, to a bowling alley. Why is he not surprised?

It’s one of those alleys with arcades in the building, too, housing what looks to be a bunch of old, retro games like  _Centipede_ and the original fucking  _Donkey Kong_. There’s an air hockey table in the middle of the arcade and a billiard table next to it, and Keith already knows that Lance is going to make both of those into a competition. Keith finds himself smiling as Lance finally releases his hand and walks up to the counter where they give out the bowling shoes. 

 

“Hi!” Lance says, his bright tone in direct contrast with the guy sitting behind the counter, who looks like he’d rather be absolutely anywhere but here. “Can we get a size eight and a size nine?” He turns to Keith, who’s waiting a few feet away. “Hey, Keith, how many games do you wanna play?”

 

Keith can only remember going bowling once before in his entire life. He has no idea how many games he wants to play. “Uh…I dunno. You pick.”

 

Lance scoffs, mock-exasperated, turns back to the worker. “We’ll go for three games, please.” As the guy walks off to get the shoes, Lance pulls his wallet out of his back pocket and digs out his card. Keith almost offers to pay half, having at least had the sense to grab his wallet and phone before they left, but Lance waves a hand at him before he can even say anything. “Don’t even ask. This was my idea, I’m paying.”

 

“Fine, fine,” Keith replies, a little distracted by the shelf full of brightly-colored bowling balls to his right. He knows they’re weighted differently and all, but he’s not totally sure why there are so many. There’s one that’s almost the exact shade of Lance’s eyes. Keith likes that one.

 

There's no one else in the alley, which isn't surprising, with how early it is. Keith is actually surprised that this place is even open yet, though he is glad that they’re beating the crowd, even if it didn't require waking up at an ungodly hour.

 

The guy comes back with the shoes fairly quickly, punches a few buttons on the cash register on his side of the counter, swipes Lance’s card. Says, “Have fun,” in a very bored voice, which doesn't even put a dent in Lance’s cheerfulness.

 

Keith suspects some of the flagrant optimism is just Lance overcompensating for how messed up Keith was the previous night and trying to make him feel better. Keith half-wishes he wouldn't, but at the same time, he could use a little flagrant optimism.

 

Lance hands Keith his shoes, leads the way to the now-lit first lane. He sits down in front of the control panel, while Keith takes a seat on the side of the ball return. Keith toes his shoes off and shoves his feet in the red and green bowling shoes, eternally grateful that he put socks on before leaving the house.

 

Tapping buttons on the control panel, Lance starts up the game, putting his and Keith’s names onto the scorecard on the screen. Thankfully, Lance is first. At least Keith can see how this is supposed to be done before he goes and makes a fool of himself, even though he knows he's going to make a fool of himself regardless. Even after having to set up the game, Lance manages to have his shoes on before Keith.

 

“Come on, pick a ball, Keithy-boy,” Lance says, standing and heading towards the shelf Keith was staring at earlier. Keith hurries to follow.

 

Lance has picked a ball in seconds, but Keith has to test a good five just to find a weight that feels right. The whole time, Lance is watching him, only half-suppressing his laughter. Keith pointedly ignores him, eventually settling on ten pounds.

 

They head back over to the lane, and Keith sets his ball in the return. Lance is just getting ready to bowl, but Keith grabs the back of his shirt before he can.

 

“You promised me food,” he says.

 

“Oh, right.” Lance puts the ball down, glances around the alley. “Ah…alright, come on, I’ll buy you a milkshake.”

 

“For breakfast?”

 

“Sure, why not.” Lance wiggles his eyebrows at him, pulls him along toward the concessions counter. “Today’s a milkshake-for-breakfast kind of day.”

 

* * *

 

Once they've got their milkshakes - chocolate for Keith, cookies and cream for Lance - they finally start the game.

 

Lance rolls a spare on the first frame.

 

Keith is, admittedly, terrible.

 

He rolls the ball right into the gutter on his first go. On his second, he manages to hit one pin. Which wobbles a little and doesn't even fall.

 

Damn. He's even worse at this than he thought he'd be. Lance is cackling in his seat as Keith sits back down, still glaring at the pins.

 

“Oh my god,” Lance wheezes, standing up to take his turn and then breaking down laughing again by the ball return. “I’ve finally found something you can't do!”

 

“First of all, fuck you,” Keith huffs. “Secondly, I’ve literally been bowling once, so shut the fuck up.”

 

That only makes Lance laugh harder. Keith turns his glare on Lance, who makes a show of holding his hands up in surrender and turning his laugh into a cough. Rolling his eyes, Keith slips off his jacket, pulls his feet up on the chair, and watches Lance knock down six pins on his first bowl and two on his second.

 

As Lance walks down from the lane, grinning this smug little grin at Keith, Keith resigns himself to failing.

 

* * *

 

  
He does. He fails quite miserably.

 

By the eighth frame, Lance has scored three strikes, two spares, and another twenty-two pins. Keith has managed a frankly disappointing thirty-one points. 

 

And yet, he’s still smiling as he walks up to take his ninth turn.

 

Keith supposes this was Lance’s intention, to get him to loosen up a bit and smile a little. He’s grateful for it, more than he wants to be. He’s absolutely terrible at bowling, but Lance keeps cracking jokes and making him laugh and yeah, maybe he’s okay with losing.

 

The end result of the game is Lance completely kicking Keith’s ass with two hundred and twelve points, while Keith didn’t even make it to the hundreds.

 

“Are you sure about all three games, Lance?” Keith asks, less because he really doesn’t want to play and more because he just wants to be sulky.

 

As the scoreboard resets to start the next game, Lance pats Keith on the shoulder, says, “I’ll help you out on your turn, buddy. After the games, we’ll get some real food and go play the arcade games.” He grabs his bowling ball, walks up to the lane, and rolls yet another strike. The way he bowls is somehow graceful, with one leg ending up a few inches in the air behind the other. Keith could watch this for hours.

 

It’s over in seconds, though, and Lance is pulling him up from his seat. Keith groans, but his reluctance lasts only moments, quickly dying out when they get up to the lane and Lance places one hand on Keith’s hip and slides the other around his waist and down Keith’s arm, settles it lightly on the back of his hand.

 

Keith suppresses a shiver, keeps his eyes locked on the end of the lane. Lance is too close, much too close. When Lance speaks, his breath tickles Keith’s ear.

 

“Okay,” Lance says softly, “so if you’re bowling with your right hand, you’re gonna want to end with your left foot in front.” He slides his left foot forward, nods at Keith to do the same. “Bowling’s all in the wrist, so when you pull the ball back, you have to make sure you keep your wrist straight.”

 

He guides Keith’s arm back, fingers now tight on Keith's shaking hand, to just behind his hip.

 

“When you take your last step -” has Lance leaned closer? Keith is pretty sure Lance has leaned closer - “- you wanna swing the ball forward and let go when it’s in line with your front leg.” 

 

Keith twists around ever so slightly so he can see Lance out of the corner of his eye. “Is that all?”

 

“Well, I mean, the - the whole lifting your back foot thing isn’t exactly necessary, and the rest of it is just about positioning your shot before you even start, so…” Lance’s words are hot against Keith’s skin. His voice is low, and rougher than usual. “So yeah, that’s - those are the basics. Just line up the shot before you actually bowl and, uh - you should be set.”

 

Keith turns farther towards Lance, just because he can, and because he wants to feel Lance’s breath on his lips instead. He stares at Lance’s eyes to avoid staring at his mouth, shoves his free hand in his pocket to avoid pressing his fingertips into the strip of skin that shows between the top of Lance’s jeans and the bottom of his shirt.

 

“Um,” Lance says.

 

And somehow that’s the thing that makes Keith jerk away. Maybe it’s something in Lance’s voice, or in his eyes, but Keith can’t look at him any longer without doing something he’ll surely regret.

 

He hears Lance step backward as he turns and resolutely stares down the lane, the fingers of his free hand curling and uncurling spastically. Keith takes a deep, shaky breath and tries to do as Lance said.

 

He hits four pins this time around. Two more on his second bowl.

 

Lance gives him a low, appreciative whistle and a thumbs up when Keith goes to sit back down. And then gets up and bowls a strike, because,  _clearly_ , he can’t just let Keith have this one.

 

That smug grin is back when Lance beckons Keith up to take his turn. Keith sticks his tongue out at him, because he’s petty like that, and feels his stomach flip when Lance winks at him.

 

* * *

 

Keith loses all three games.

 

By the third, he’s managed to earn more points than an eight-year-old would, at least, but he still lags far behind Lance’s score, which peaked at two-hundred and seventeen. Halfway through the second game, Lance relents and puts up the bumpers, which still does little to help Keith’s abject failure.

 

Regardless, Keith has a great time.

 

Lunch comes and goes - they share a pizza and fries, Lance laughs at Keith’s less-than-impressive bowling skills, and Keith bites back with no real fire. Lance smiles much more than necessary, but otherwise hides his concern quite well, and Keith plays along like absolutely nothing is wrong.

 

There's a lot hanging between them, but it's nice, all in all.

 

They head to the arcade after lunch, each with a little cup of tokens in hand. Lance is practically vibrating with energy, and Keith can see him eyeing the air hockey table in the middle of the arcade. But whereas Keith got crushed in bowling, he’s actually pretty good at air hockey.

 

“Keith. Keith, you know what we’re playing first, right?”

 

Keith just grins at him. “Best three out of five?”

 

“ _Definitely.”_ _  
_

 

* * *

 

 

Air hockey is an inherently competitive game, but somehow Lance manages to make it even worse.

 

Keith’s prepared for an intense match, because everything with Lance is intense, but as it turns out, arcades bring out the  _extra_ competitive side of Lance. The boy plays air hockey like it’s the most important thing he’ll ever do, completely and totally cutthroat.

 

There’s never a dull moment, the little puck clanging loudly against the sides of the table, and they actually attract a small audience pretty quickly. The bowling alley has filled up quite a bit since they arrived, and a few people crowd around the air hockey table just to watch.

 

Keith ignores them and Lance seems unbothered, though, every once in a while, the crowd will cheer when one of them scores. They seem to have taken sides, cheering and booing accordingly for whoever they were backing. It’s ridiculous, but Lance grins and bows at their audience every time he scores a point, and Keith almost wants to let him win just to see him smile.

 

He doesn’t.

 

He wins, three games to two. A couple of little kids on Lance’s side groan dejectedly, and this only seems to fuel Lance’s tirade on how Keith apparently cheated. In air hockey.

 

Lance makes a big deal about letting Keith pick next, once the crowd has dispersed and Lance’s indignation has died out, even though Keith would be okay with playing whatever Lance wanted. He's glad, though, when he catches a glimpse of a  _Galaga_ game in the corner of the room.

 

“Come on, then, McClain, let’s see who can get a higher score in  _Galaga._ ”

 

“Oh, you're going  _down._ ”

 

“Whatever you say, Lance.”

 

_Whatever you say._

 

* * *

 

Keith does win  _Galaga,_ as well. But Lance comes right back and crushes him in  _Pac-Man_ and then in pinball.  _Mortal Kombat_ goes to Lance, but  _Street Fighter II_ goes to Keith. The motorcycle racing game is won by Keith, whereas Lance kicks his ass in the creepy zombie apocalypse game in the corner.

 

All in all, they come out of the arcade almost,  _almost_ tied. But Lance, who continually picked shooter games, which he has a clear advantage on (and which, as Keith will tell anyone who'll listen, is  _cheating),_ wins by one game.

 

“Told you I’d win,” Lance says now, the stuffed bear he bought with the tickets he won in hand as they walk out of the alley.

 

Keith, who's already heard this four times now and can't be bothered to argue any longer, just replies, “Uh-huh. You did.”

 

“I still can't believe you beat me in skeeball, though. I mean -”

 

Keith stops listening, just smiling and nodding along. He had fun, sure, but at a certain point, it's just…a lot. After everything that went down the night before, spending the day with Lance, which would be a normal occurrence otherwise, is way harder than it should be. Being around Lance, with no sort of buffer between them and no boundaries whatsoever, makes the niggling feeling in the back of his mind grow.

 

“Hey, you wanna go get ice cream?”

 

Keith glances at Lance, his voice jolting him out of his thoughts. Lance is staring back at him, inquisitive but miraculously unconcerned, and Keith says, “Didn't we have milkshakes already?”

 

“So?”

 

Lance starts the car, his hand on the gear shift, and Keith wants nothing more than to be able to rest his own hand on top of Lance’s. His eyes trace over the curves of Lance’s profile, and he has an inexplicable urge to run his fingers through the boy’s hair. Keith forces himself to look away, jerking around to stare out the window, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets and twisting his fingers into the fabric.

  
Keith can feel Lance’s eyes on him, and he has to think back just to figure out what the question he’s supposed to be answering is.

 

Lance helps him out, seeming to catch onto how distracted Keith is. “So ice cream it is, then?” Thankfully, Lance doesn’t catch onto  _why_ Keith is so distracted.

 

“Uh, sure. Sounds good to me.”

Lance shoots him a bright grin and starts to pull out of the parking lot. And Keith just sits there and lets Lance babble on about everything and nothing all at once, smiling and nodding along in his best imitation of a rational human being.

 

* * *

 

“Keith, babe, you can’t  _actually think_ that Captain America is better than Iron Man.”

 

Keith gives an equally indignant retort, but he’s kind of caught on the casual use of the word  _babe_ in this conversation. How it rolls off Lance’s tongue so easily. How it makes Keith’s heart flutter and his stomach clench in a way that’s more pleasant than it should be.

 

He steps into the house behind Lance, who walks into the kitchen while Keith shuts the door behind them and leans against it, taking a deep breath and running his hands over the goosebumps on his arms. Half a smile paints itself across his face as he pushes himself off the wall.

 

“Hey, Lance, what are we watching?” he asks, heading towards the living room.

 

Lance tosses both of their ice cream cups in the trash, says, “You can pick. S’your day, after all.”

 

Keith, who’s still turning the word _babe_ over in his head and wondering if dating Lance would make this a more frequent occurrence or not, hears himself say, “Thank you,” in this unnecessarily sappy voice that has him wishing he could sink right through the floor.

 

It also has Lance turning to give him a questioning look, his eyebrows knitting together. A faint tinge of pink spreads across his cheeks as his eyes soften in understanding. “No problemo, Keith. You feeling better, then?”

 

Keith perches on the armrest behind him. “Yeah,” he replies honestly. “I had fun today.”

 

“Me too.” Lance grins at him, lifts himself up to sit on the kitchen counter. Keith likes him like that (he likes him like anything, really, but the twinkle in his eyes and the way he swings his legs in the air like a kid whose feet don’t reach the ground make something catch in Keith’s chest all over again).

 

He’s staring, he knows, but he can’t make himself stop. Lance’s shirt dips low enough that Keith’s eyes can trace his collarbone, but Keith is more interested in the crinkle in the corner of Lance’s eyes, the little dimple in his cheek that only appears when Lance’s smile is genuine, the curve of his bottom lip. This is the face Keith sees in his dreams, painted on the backs of his eyelids night after night, but it’s so much better when he’s awake.

 

Lance says something that Keith doesn’t quite catch; he was probably asking if Keith is okay, but he could just as well have been wondering where his favorite mug went.

 

Doesn’t matter, either way, because Keith’s brain and Keith’s mouth don’t seem to be working together well enough for him to have answered the question anyway. Or well enough for his thoughts not to come tumbling past his lips with little to no inhibition.

 

“I always have fun when I’m with you, though.” It’s Keith’s voice, casual and nonchalant and completely level, but he’s not sure what the  _fuck_ has possessed him to actually say this. He blames it on the sugar. He blames it on Lance.

 

He could play it off, he’s sure, let it just be what it is and move the fuck on. Quit while he’s ahead. While his face is still a somewhat acceptable shade of red. While Lance is still smiling at him as if this is a perfectly acceptable thing to say.

 

“I mean, I have fun with the others, too, but it’s different with you.” Keith cannot stop talking. The words have started coming and they won’t stop. There’s so much,  _too_ much, that he wants to say to Lance. He’s been holding onto it for so long and it’s finally escaped his death grip. “You’re just different in general.”

 

Lance’s face is turning red again. His legs have stopped swinging.

 

Keith continues, “Well, it’s not that you’re different, exactly, you’re just different to me.”

 

“Um.”

 

“In a good way, Lance. In a really good way.”

 

Lance is looking at him in this way that Keith can’t fully decipher. Emotions are laid bare on his face - confusion, thoughtfulness, disbelief - but Keith still can’t predict how this is going to play out.

 

“I -” Lance opens his mouth, closes it again. Catches his bottom lip between his teeth, releases it. “I don’t - I don’t understand.”

 

“You do,” Keith says.  _You have to._

 

_Please understand._

 

“Keith, I - are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

 

_I’m saying I’m in love with you._

 

“Yes.”

 

_Of course I am. Was there ever a chance that I wouldn’t fall for you?_

 

“Oh,’ Lance says.

 

_Yeah. ‘Oh’._

 

Keith takes a deep breath - in through his nose, out through his mouth. The weight on his shoulders lessens, but the knot in his stomach tightens. “I’m sorry.”

 

“You - sorry? For what?”

 

Lance seems so genuinely confused that Keith can’t even be pissed at him for making him explain. He’s surprised that his voice has remained this steady through all this. He’s even more surprised that his legs have held up.

 

“For falling for you,” Keith answers, bluntly. Puts it all out there, because why not, at this point.

 

Lance nods disconcertedly, stares at Keith for a long moment. “Don’t be.”

 

“I -”

 

“Don’t apologize for feeling, Keith.” Keith’s entire body burns under Lance’s gaze. “Especially not to me.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“And don’t feel bad for falling for me.”

 

“…Okay.”

 

“Because I sure as hell don’t feel bad for falling for you.”

 

“Okay.”

 

The lopsided smirk Lance is sending his way is just enough to make Keith go back and reconsider what was just said. He’s sure his bewilderment shows on his face, but he doesn’t care.

 

_I don’t feel bad for falling for you._

 

Lance fell for him. _Lance_ fell for  _him._ Lance  _likes_ him.

 

_Huh._

 

“Oh,” Keith says. “You - you mean -”

 

“I do.”

 

“Oh,” Keith repeats. Lance snorts.

 

Lance hops down from the counter as Keith mulls over this new development, pads out of the kitchen and over to stand in front of Keith. He's trying to mask it, but the little hint of fear is still visible in his eyes.

 

Keith stands, sets his palms on the armrest, leans his weight back on his hands. He doesn't know what to say, now. He's gotten his confession out, and so has Lance, apparently, and he's not sure there's anything left to say.

 

Lance thinks so, though. Of course.

 

“Keith,” he says, a mere foot away from Keith (still too far, still too far). He doesn't continue.

 

“Yeah?” Keith prompts, voice soft.

 

“I really want to kiss you right now.”

 

The corners of Keith’s mouth turn ever so slightly upward. His hands are shaking, his stomach dropped a while back, and everything feels hot, but he manages to keep his nervousness out of his face pretty well, he thinks.

 

“Then do it,” Keith whispers. He can feel his pulse jumping as Lance inches closer. Lance’s fingers graze his collarbone, the barely-there touch ghosting over his shoulder and pushing his jacket down his arms, tossing it somewhere across the room.

 

Lance’s hand settles lightly on the back of Keith’s neck. This whole thing feels like a scene from a movie - one of those cheesy romance movies where everything works out and everyone’s happy in the end. Keith has always hated those kinds of stories, always thought them ridiculous and unrealistic, but now, as Lance leans in and Keith feels that first brush of lips, he decides that maybe happy endings aren’t so unattainable after all.

 

The first kiss is soft, chaste, meant for nothing more than testing the waters.  _Wonderful,_ Keith thinks, but Lance pulls back and his gaze flicks from Keith’s eyes, down to his mouth, and back again, as if asking permission - rather unnecessarily, in Keith’s opinion. Keith replies by pressing his lips back against Lance’s, harder this time.

 

Lance curls his fingers into Keith’s hair, tugs lightly. Keith moans softly, starts to raise one hand to grip Lance’s waist, but loses his footing halfway through and falls back onto the couch, causing Lance to come tumbling with him.

 

And Lance laughs at him, of course. Lance managed to catch himself with his hands on either side of Keith’s head, his hips situated between Keith’s legs, and is practically giggling as Keith tries to glare at him and ends up laughing along.

 

The feelings hit him again, in that moment, like a damn freight train. Lance’s nose scrunches up, his laugh lilting and musical to Keith’s ears, and, despite the soft landing, Keith feels like the wind has been knocked out of him. He reaches a hand up in a futile attempt to smooth out the creases in Lance’s bottom lip, cups Lance’s cheek, yanks him down by his shirt sleeve.

 

Lance gives a low hum in the back of his throat as their lips slide together in perfect sync. Keith nibbles at Lance’s bottom lip, feels the boy smile into the kiss. Their teeth clack and their noses butt together, but it’s Lance. And it’s perfect. It’s perfect  _because_ it’s Lance.

 

Lance’s fingers slip under Keith’s shirt, brush up his sides, trace the curves of his ribs. Keith shivers under the touch, breaking the kiss to come up for air, a dreamy look plastered on his face. Counts _three, four, five_ of the freckles scattered along Lance’s nose but gives up quickly, what with Lance leaning back down to press their lips together again.

 

“Mm…Lance,” Keith says between kisses. “We - we should -”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“Bed.”

 

Lance pushes up on his elbows, gives Keith this questioning, vaguely concerned look.

 

 _"Not_  like that, Lance. Just - more space.”

 

“Oh. Right.”

 

Keith’s not totally sure how they get there, simultaneously stumbling down the hallway and fumbling with each other, but they fall onto Lance’s bed together eventually, rolling around and shifting positions until they settle with Keith straddling Lance’s hips. Lance’s hands are everywhere, making Keith’s skin burn with the contact.

 

Everything’s hot. Keith is inhaling an unbalanced blend of oxygen and  _Lance_ , and he’s never been happier.

 

“I really like you,” Keith breathes, traces the words into his skin.

 

Lance sighs into Keith’s mouth, cards his fingers through Keith’s hair. Kisses him again and murmurs, “I really like you, too.”

 

The sentiment is rather obvious, really, on both of their parts, with how neither of them can seem to get close enough to the other, but the words still send a shock down Keith’s spine. Keith pulls away, sits up a little, and just stares, eyes skimming the outline of Lance’s face.

 

“You’re beautiful, you know,” Keith says, just to watch Lance squirm underneath him.

 

Lance shoots back, without a second of hesitation, “Not as beautiful as you,” and laughs as Keith’s face heats up.

 

Keith makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “You can’t - you can’t  _one-up_ my compliments, Lance!”

 

“I can and I did.”

 

“I - you’re such an asshole!”

 

“Well, you’re the guy who  _really likes_ said asshole.”

 

“An undeniable tragedy.”

 

“Hey!” It’s indignant, but the dopey grin on his face is more than a little contradictory.

 

 _I’d give you the world if you asked,_ Keith thinks. Lance brushes his fingers along Keith’s jawline and says, “I’ve already got it.”

 

It takes him a long moment to realize that he said that out loud and an even longer one to process Lance’s words. And when he does, it’s all he can do to lean down and kiss Lance’s nose.

 

“Stay here tonight.”

 

“Okay.” Keith’s not quite up to speed on the nuances of post-makeout etiquette, but he’s pretty sure leaving directly after is generally filed under  _Don’t_ , rather than  _Do_.

 

“I’m never letting you go now, y’know.” Lance’s hands are on his thighs. Keith has no idea when they got there. “You got yourself into this, and there’s no take-backsies now.”

 

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Lance,” Keith says, and means every word of it.

 

Lance is still giving him that soppy little smile, and Keith is still processing the fact that they’re actually here. They’ve actually made it to this point. Safe and sound and _together._ Keith never thought they’d make it this far.

 

Lance doesn’t let him get very far into that train of thought, though, propping himself on his elbows to nuzzle Keith’s neck, whispering, “Hey. S’late.”

 

“Mm…sleep?”

 

“Yep. We’ll pick this up in the morning, yeah?”

 

“Okay.”

 

In the aftermath of all this, Keith wants nothing more than to curl up with Lance and sleep until noon. To wake up together. To exchange sleepy morning kisses and whispered _I love you_ ’s.

 

Well, maybe that last one can wait a little while. For now, Keith shifts around until his head rests on Lance’s chest and his legs tangle in Lance’s, allows the other boy to wrap his arms around him, lets his eyelids flutter closed.

 

As he drifts off, Keith voices one last question.

 

“Will you still be here in the morning?”

 

There’s a small sigh, a puff of air on the top of Keith’s head. The last thing he hears before falling asleep is, “Of course. Where else would I go?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**_Day 6_ **

 

Keith wakes up slowly, to the scent of saltwater and a dizzying sense of déjà vu.

 

He blinks his eyes open, squinting against the light pouring in from the window, lifts his head just enough to glance around the room properly. It’s…not his, is the first thing he notes.

 

The second is that it’s empty.

 

Before he even knows what he’s doing, Keith’s up and stumbling toward the doorway, the words,  _where else would I go?_ ringing in his ears.

 

Every inch of his body tingles, and he can still feel the press of Lance’s mouth on his. He’s dizzy, ever so slightly, punch-drunk on the memory of the night before. But all that is muted underneath the chill in his bones because he’s alone again.

 

Always alone.

 

He’s got this sick sense of déjà vu, like he’s been in this position before, even though he hasn’t. There’s no way he’s been in this position before. It makes no sense, but the feeling is still there.

 

Keith digs his fingernails into his palm, tells his brain to shove it, and, halfway down the staircase, catches a whiff of coffee. Freshly brewed coffee. And bacon.

 

Oh.

 

“ _I used to think maybe you loved me, now I know that it's true,”_ Lance sings from where he stands at the stove, swaying his hips in time with the song. “ _And I don't want to spend my whole life just a-waiting for you.”_

 

He’s got a rubber spatula in one hand, which he’s using both for cooking and as a makeshift microphone, he’s still wearing his clothes from the day before, and Keith could not be any more in love.

 

Keith doesn’t announce his presence just yet, instead watching fondly as Lance bustles around the kitchen. Thankfully, Lance doesn’t notice him, too invested in trying to cook, sing, and dance all at the same time.

 

“ _Now, I don't want you back for the weekend, not back for a day, no, no, no.”_ Keith stifles a laugh as Lance spins over to the cabinets to grab plates, still completely oblivious to his audience. “ _I said, baby, I just want you back, and I want you to stay.”_

 

Something about this makes Keith’s chest ache. It’s so nice, so comforting, to wake up to this. To wake up in Lance’s bed, to his boyfriend making breakfast and singing 80’s pop songs.

 

 _It’s not going to last,_ says the little voice in Keith’s head. Keith ignores it in favor of focusing on something else.

 

_Boyfriend._

 

Keith turns that one over in his head, smiling to himself, finds himself singing along to a song that perfectly sums up his feelings.

 

“ _Now I’m walking on sunshine, whoa-oh-oh._ ” Lance jerks around at the sound of Keith’s voice, gravelly and hoarse from sleep. The spatula slips from his fingers, landing, luckily, on the counter, instead of clattering to the floor. Keith grins at him as Lance sputters and fumbles to smooth out the wrinkles in his shirt, rather futilely.

 

“Jesus fuck, Keith, don’t scare me like that!” Lance yelps, but it’s clear that he doesn’t really mind.

 

“Sorry,” Keith replies, not sorry at all. He steps into the room and sits on one of the barstools at the island. “What’re you making?”

 

“Eggs and bacon.” Lance turns back to the stove, pokes at the bacon with a fork. “You know, I had this whole thing planned out where you’d come downstairs and I’d be like, _morning, sunshine_ , and you’d be like,  _damn, I have the best boyfriend in the world_ , and -”

 

Lance cuts himself off, choking on absolutely nothing. Keith is at his side in seconds, ready to put to use the extensive knowledge of CPR that he can’t remember ever having found necessary, but Lance waves him off. He coughs a few times, leaning his weight on the counter, grinds out,  “I, uh - I also told myself  _not_ to say the word boyfriend, but, well.”

 

And it’s so utterly  _ridiculous_ that Keith can’t help but laugh. The scandalized look Lance shoots him only makes him laugh harder.

 

“You’re laughing at me,” Lance says, dry and vaguely offended. “I cannot believe you’re laughing at me right now.”

 

“I’m - m’sorry, I just -” Keith wheezes out, grabbing Lance’s hand to keep him from turning away. Lance glances at their now-joined hands, then up at Keith - he’s trying to guard his expression, Keith can tell, but it’s hard to pull off  _casually indifferent_ when your face is the color of a tomato. “It’s sweet that you were worried about that.”

 

“We haven’t even had the official boyfriend talk and you’re already treating me like this.”

 

“I - oh my god, okay, can you just -”

 

“Nope.”

 

“I didn’t even -”

 

“Whatever you were gonna say, the answer is no.”

 

“Lance -”

 

“No.”

 

They’re both snickering, though Lance is trying to pretend he’s not.

 

“Lance.”

 

“I refuse whatever offer you have prepared.”

 

“What are you even -”

 

“Keith, sweetheart, babe, light of my life, do me a favor and -”

 

Keith kisses him. In the middle of their shared kitchen, barefoot and dressed in day old clothes, as bacon sizzles and probably burns next to them, Keith tugs Lance down the couple inches to his level and kisses him.

 

There’s so much sheer domesticity in this one moment that Keith can ignore the fact that his clothes are still grimy and stained with the ice cream Lance flicked at him the day before (he’s surprised Lance even let him sleep in this outfit, especially in Lance’s own bed) and he can’t get the weird feeling that something’s wrong out of his head and breakfast is probably fucking burning.

 

None of that matters when Lance walks them backward, spins them around, and lifts Keith up onto the counter. Or when Keith wraps his legs around Lance’s waist and twists his finger into Lance’s hair, making it stick up even worse than it already did. Or when Lance whispers, “So we're boyfriends, right?” into Keith’s neck, and Keith breathes the words  _yes, dumbass_ into Lance’s mouth.

 

Or even when the food catches on fire and nearly burns the whole kitchen down.

 

They end up going out for breakfast.

 

* * *

 

They spend the rest of their day at home, tangled with each other and caught up in soft declarations and quiet admiration.

 

Keith receives a call from Shiro at 9:53 PM, which goes unnoticed. Another call at 9:06 goes ignored. The series of increasingly worried texts from 10:16 to 10:22 doesn’t even fully register in Keith’s head.

 

Lance’s phone, which, unlike Keith’s, is not permanently set to vibrate, rings insistently at 10:30.

 

“Mm…Keith, babe, hang - hang on,” Lance says between kisses, patting the bedside table in search of his phone. Keith groans lowly at the loss of contact, but sits back on Lance’s thighs and waits.

 

“Oh fuck,” Lance mutters, but doesn’t give Keith a chance to ask what’s wrong before he’s chattering away into the phone. “Hey Shiro, how’s - what? Yeah, we’re fine - no, he’s here, did you need - he must not’ve heard his phone, but he’s fine, he’s right here - oh, you wanna talk to him?”

 

_Oh fuck, indeed._

 

Keith locks eyes with Lance, gives him the most pleading look he can muster, shakes his head frantically. He hasn’t spoken to Shiro since the incident two days ago, and he really doesn’t want to deal with this now. Not when his brain is fuzzy and muddled and doesn’t want to work with him, and definitely not when he could be kissing his new boyfriend instead.

 

“Uh…” Lance and Keith have a long, silent conversation consisting of mostly mouthed words and vague, nonsensical hand gestures; somewhere in this, Keith gives up, because really, there’s no way he’s going to win anyway. “Yeah, you can talk to him.”

 

Keith shoots Lance one last glare before rolling off the bed and standing up, trying to keep his voice from wavering as he says into the phone, “Hey, Shiro.”

 

_“I called you. Twice.”_

 

“Sorry, sorry, I was, uh -” Keith glances back at Lance, who’s propped up on his elbows and watching with thinly veiled interest - “…busy. What’s up?”

 

_“I just wanted to check and see how you were doing. What were you doing where you couldn’t pick up your phone, Keith?”_

 

Keith blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. “Movie marathon with Lance.”

 

Lance snorts from a few feet away. Keith ignores him.

 

_“Ah. What are you guys watching?”_

 

“The Lord of The Rings.”

 

_“Sounds like fun.”_

 

“Yeah.”

 

There’s a long moment of awkward silence on the line. Lance is laughing at him, quietly. Keith flips him off over his shoulder and Lance just laughs harder.

 

_“So…have you thought about what I said the other day? I know it’s scary, kiddo, but keeping it a secret is obviously getting to you, and I don’t -”_

 

“Uh, yeah, I - I’m okay, Shiro, we’re, ah, working it out.”

 

_“Meaning?”_

 

“Shiro.”

 

_“What? I’m just worried about -”_

 

Shiro stops. Keith waits.

 

_“Oh.”_

 

“Yeah.”

 

_“You told him?”_

 

“Yeah.”

 

_“And it went well?”_

 

“Go ahead, say it.”

 

 _“Well I_ did, _in fact, tell you so.”_

 

“I’m hanging up now, Shiro.”

 

_“Wait, no -”_

 

“Goodbye, Shiro.”

 

 _“I’m happy for you! And be safe! And -”_ _  
_

Keith hangs up. As soon as he does, Lance bursts out laughing, making a half-assed attempt to muffle it in his hand at first, but giving up very shortly. Keith tries to glare at him, but he’s holding back a smile. He settles for grabbing a pillow from the bed and throwing it at Lance.

 

Lance yelps, throws the pillow right back at Keith, who bats it away in favor of sitting back down on the bed. Lance sobers up quickly, asks, “S’that all sorted out, then?”

 

Keith sighs, running his hand through his hair. “I’m sure we’ll be having a longer conversation soon, but for now, yes. It’s sorted.”

 

“He’s just worried, you know.” Keith isn’t even looking at Lance, but he can  _hear_ the concern in his voice. He rolls his eyes, but knows Lance is right.

 

“I know, I just - wish he wouldn’t. I don’t want him to stress out over me,” Keith says, scooting over to Lance. Lance automatically wraps an arm around him, and Keith curls into his side. “Can we talk about something else?”

 

“Of course,” Lance replies, but doesn’t offer anything up.

 

The silence stretches for  _thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four_ seconds before Keith can’t take it.

 

“How’s volunteering?” he asks, just to have something to say. Normally it’s Lance who can’t stand the quiet, but Keith doesn’t want to think. If it’s quiet, his thoughts will just get louder. Compensation, he figures. Thing is, his thoughts have been getting pretty weird lately.

 

His brain has gone haywire, has it seems, or is getting there, at the very least. The voice in his head keeps telling him that he’s missing something, but there’s nothing to miss.

 

“It’s good! Really good.” Lance’s face has lit up, Keith is sure of it. “I really like that I’m still able to help people, even after Voltron.”

 

“Tell me about it,” Keith mumbles into Lance’s shirt.

 

“Well, I volunteered at the hospital last week, and I actually delivered a Blue Lion balloon to this one kid - she was so excited when I told her who I was, it was awesome. My boss let me hang with her for a while and…”

 

Keith falls asleep to the lull of his boyfriend’s voice, and he dreams only of Lance that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE DO NOT REPOST ART FROM THIS FIC
> 
> INSTEAD, REBLOG DIRECTLY FROM [HERE](http://forsakenangel88.tumblr.com/post/164054345518/my-part-of-the-voltronbang-i-was-partnered-with)
> 
> hit me up on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pidgeottogunderson)


	2. Part 2

**_Day 7_ **

****  


The dawn of a new day does, in fact, bring sleepy morning kisses.

****

Keith is woken by the whisper in his ear, Lance’s raspy voice saying his name. The brush of lips against Keith’s ear makes him shiver, only just awake. Keith smiles into his pillow, turns his head to look at Lance, who smiles back at him and tucks a strand of Keith’s hair behind his ear. Keith blinks sleepily up at him and pushes up on his elbows to press his lips to Lance’s.

****

“Good morning,” he murmurs.

****

“Mm…morning.” Lance pulls back, eyes sparkling, and runs his thumb along Keith’s bottom lip. “How’d you sleep?”

****

_Better than I have in days._ “Great. You?”

 

“Better than I usually do on my own.”

 

Keith’s face burns bright red. “You really are gonna be the death of me, huh?”

****

“It’d be an honor.”

 

Snorting a laugh, Keith shoves Lance off of him and sits up, brushing his hair out of his eyes. The room spins, for a second, liked he’d moved much too fast; Keith squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head as if to clear it, opens his eyes again. The spinning stops. Keith shrugs it off, climbing out of bed and saying, “I’m gonna make breakfast today.”

 

“You don’t even cook.”

****

“I’ll manage.”

****

“You almost set fire to the kitchen last time.”

 

“ _You_ almost set fire to the kitchen just yesterday.”

 

“…Point.”

****

Keith laughs.

****

“But you still can’t cook,” Lance says.

****

“You do it, can’t be that hard.”

 

“ _Rude.”_

****

Because he really does want to cook, and just because he can, Keith turns back to Lance, halfway through the doorway, puts on as flirty of a voice as he can muster, and says, “Let me cook breakfast for my boyfriend.”

****

And well, there’s no saying no to that.

 

* * *

 

 

He burns toast. 

Lance thanks him for it anyway.

 

* * *

  


Lance heads out a couple hours later - it’s a volunteering day, apparently. Keith must’ve forgot.

****

He’s not sure what to do now that he's all alone for the day. Lance gave a vague suggestion of  _go out or something_ before he flew out the door, but  _going out_ doesn't sound particularly appealing without Lance. He’s usually just fine, being on his own, but he’s no longer okay with being left alone with his thoughts. Not when his thoughts are turning against him. There's a fleeting moment where he considers calling Shiro, but then his brain remembers why, exactly, that's a  _terrible idea._

****

Keith decides, eventually, to go for a walk. It’s a nice enough day, he’s bored, and his vision is starting to get shiny around the edges, so he figures he could use some sun anyway. He takes a quick shower and changes his clothes, then heads out.

****

He regrets it, very soon.

****

A good five minutes pass. Keith wanders down the street with no destination in mind, content to just be for a while, his hands in his pockets and a small smile crossing his face every time he thinks of Lance. Which is, admittedly, often.

****

But by the sixth minute, Keith’s thoughts have wandered, the world has started to look a little fuzzy, and he’s sporting a searing headache.

****

The voice in his head has started up again, louder this time. It’s like someone’s pounding at his skull with a hammer, all the while screaming,  _Open your eyes, dumbass, you’re missing something!_

****

Keith doubles over, clutching at his head, ready to throw up in the middle of the road. Or better yet, pass out. He can barely breathe, his eyes are stinging, and his stomach is twisted in knots.

****

And then it’s gone.

****

As quickly as it came, the pain dissipates, leaving Keith numb. The voice quiets and the headache disappears completely; Keith blinks the spots out of his vision and straightens up cautiously.

****

Keith runs a hand through his hair, trying to catch his breath. He’s glad that this road is so deserted - he doesn’t need some stranger coming to ask if he’s okay. Which he’s not. He has no idea what just happened, there, but it’s thrown off whatever content rhythm he had.

****

Walking doesn’t sound so appealing, anymore, since the nausea still hasn’t faded fully and the trees outside are starting to blur together into a big blob of brown and green, so Keith turns around. Every step makes him want to stop and sit down, preferably on his bed, but he’ll take a nice tree stump at this point.

****

The voice is gone, but there’s still a niggling feeling scratching at the back of his mind, telling him that something’s wrong. He would’ve thought that all the  _I have a bad feeling about this_ moments passed during Voltron -  apparently not, though.

 

It takes him longer to get back to the house than it did to get to where his headache hit. A solid ten minutes passes, and by then, Keith is exhausted.

****

Keith walks by the clock on his way upstairs -  _10:42._ Is that too early to take a nap?

****

Who is he kidding, it’s never too early to take a nap.

 ****  
  


The voice persists, even in Keith’s sleep.

****

His dreams can barely even be described as dreams - all he gets is little snatches of scenes he only just remembers and feelings he only half-feels. The only thing that sticks out is the constant scream of  _you’re missing something!_ like someone recorded it and put in on repeat and the highest volume.

****

Needless to say, Keith’s nap doesn’t last long.

****

His head hurts again, when he wakes fully, after a fitful, restless sleep. It’s not even been three hours -  _1:16,_ the bedside clock reads.

****

_Great._

****

There’s no way he’s going to fall asleep again, so Keith drags himself out of bed, feeling scrubby and scratchy and grimy. He heads straight to the bathroom to dig through the medicine cabinet. He finds Advil easily enough, downs one dry. Considers banging his head against the wall to see if it’ll counteract the pounding in his skull, decides it’s not worth it.

****

Not bothering to look at his reflection, Keith pads out of the bathroom and down the stairs, rubbing at his temples all the while. He finds himself staring into the refrigerator in the kitchen, only half-registering the lackluster supply of food. He should make a sandwich or something, he thinks, but a wave of nausea passes over him again at the thought, which is, subsequently, vetoed.

****

He can’t sleep, he can’t eat. He can barely feel his fucking fingertips. There’s a layer of fuzziness coating his whole body - he feels as if he could press his fingers into his ribs and they’d go right through.

****

Something’s missing.

****

That’s what the voice has been telling him, since yesterday, and it’s finally starting to sink in. That’s why the puzzle isn’t fitting together, because there’s a piece missing. Or a few pieces, maybe. He still doesn’t have much information.

****

He needs more information.

****

Something’s wrong, here, and he has to figure out what it is.  _Bad feelings,_ for Keith, usually do turn out to mean something, so he can’t ignore it any longer.

****

With this in mind, Keith sets to work.

 ****  


* * *

 

 

As it turns out, it’s quite difficult to find what’s missing when there’s absolutely nothing to go off of.

****

All Keith has is an itch in his head, telling him to search, but not telling him for what. He’s got nothing to work with, he hasn’t eaten anything since his breakfast of burnt toast and an apple, and he feels like he’s only running on the two and a half hours of sleep, if it could even be called that, he got a little while ago. Despite the Advil, Keith’s headache persists, and he’s downed two more pills in the past two hours.

****

There’s something he’s supposed to remember.

****

Over the last two hours, he’s pored over his journal again, searched the whole house twice, and even tried meditation, and this is all he’s got. He’s forgotten something, something important, and he needs to remember.

  
Something bad is going to happen if he doesn’t, he thinks. He doesn’t know what and he doesn’t know why, but he knows it’s true.

****

He  _has_ to remember. No matter what it takes, he has to figure out what he’s forgetting.

****

Now, at 3:38, Keith paces. He crosses the length of the living room one way, then the other, as if the repetition will trigger something in his head. It doesn’t.

****

The voice in his head is scolding him for having forgotten in the first place. Keith snaps at it, out loud, at one point. He’s eternally grateful that no one else is home to hear him.

****

By 4;00, Keith is pretty certain that he’s not going to find anything.

****

But then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees one of the pictures on the mantle - one that he’s seen plenty of, but strikes him differently this time.

****

It’s of the team - the full team, plus Matt Holt, which means someone else took the picture - and they’re all decked out in formalwear. It looks like they’re in a fancy restaurant or something. Lance is making bunny ears behind Keith’s head, while Keith has an arm around Pidge.

****

Keith doesn’t remember taking this picture.

 

Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t remember taking any of the pictures on the mantle. Not a single thing in the pictures rings a bell - he doesn’t know what day any of them were taken, where they were taken, anything like that.

****

He feels nauseous again. Really, legitimately nauseous.

****

He just barely makes it to the bathroom toilet before he hurls.

 ****  
  


* * *

  
  
  


_Don’t forget._

****

_Don’t forget._

****

_Don’t - don’t -_

****

“Come on,” Keith murmurs, hands gripping the edges of the sink. Hunched forward, hair curtaining over his face, Keith lifts his eyes to the mirror, eyes skating over his face - the bloodshot eyes, the sunken cheeks, the paler-than-usual skin. He looks like he’s seen a ghost - or maybe he  _is_ the ghost. “Come on, Kogane,  _think_.”

****

_What are you missing?_

****

This bathroom is small, too small. Keith feels trapped in more ways than one, and he’s not sure if he’s even breathing or not. His chest is tight, his throat constricted; he’s floating, somehow, dizzy with more than just lack of oxygen. “Breathe, idiot,” he tells himself, raising one hand to run it through his hair.

****

He’s a mess. He’s a complete and total mess and he’s not even sure why - but that’s just it! He can’t remember how he ended up here or why he’s so fucked up or - or what he’s doing here at all. Wait, no, of course he’s supposed to be here. Where else would he be?

****

But that’s still not right, is it? Something’s still off, but he can’t put his finger on it. His hands are shaking, violently. He yanks open the medicine cabinet above the sink - Lance said they had sleep aids, right? Except his vision is blurring and he can’t read the labels or even  _hold_ the bottles - some of which clatter to the floor, making Keith jump.

****

“Fuck -” Keith pounds a hand against the sink, a tear slipping down his cheek. He pulls back a little and catches another glimpse of himself -  _god_ , he looks awful - and then his fist is in the mirror and he’s bleeding and shaking and sliding to the floor. He pulls his knees to his chest, ignoring the glass scattered around. His hand throbs, knuckles split, little shards of glass embedded in his fingers.

****

He’s crying now, really crying, and he still can’t  _remember._ He blinks hard, rubbing at his eyes with his sleeve. Groaning in frustration, Keith picks a piece of glass off the floor, twirling it between his fingers. He’s readying himself to throw the shard at the wall, just to see if it’ll stick, when the sharp tip bites into his palm and he stops.

****

A little bead of red bubbles up on his hand; Keith stares, shifts the shard to his left hand. Balls up his right and watches the blood spread across his palm and his fingers. The pain is…grounding, in a sense. It’s real.

 

Sniffling, he opens his hand again and brings the shard to his palm, blessedly steady. He presses the edge, just lightly, against his palm, and this, the dull sting of his skin breaking, the blood spilling down his hand,  _this_ is real.

****

Everything withstanding, he still bleeds red.

****

And then - as blood drips onto the floor and Keith digs the glass deeper - he hears the front door open.

****

“Honey, I’m home!” Lance’s voice sings from the entryway. Keith’s head shoots up and he drops the glass, cursing quietly. Pressing down on the cut with his other hand, the knuckles of which are definitely going to bruise, Keith glances around the ruined bathroom and takes a deep breath.

****

Lance is going to kill him.

****

“Keith?” Lance calls out, closer than before.

****

Keith chokes back a sob, manages to yell back, “I’m in the bathroom, Lance! I’ll, uh - I’ll be out in a minute.”

****

It’s quiet for a moment. Keith holds his breath. “Okay,” Lance says eventually, albeit dubiously. He hears Lance shuffle past and exhales heavily. Struggles to his feet (thankfully still wearing shoes), a little dizzy and more than a little nauseous, turns on the tap, shoves both hands under the lukewarm water.

****

He bites down hard on his bottom lip to keep from crying out, though a soft whine escapes his lips. The sting of water on an open wound has him reeling, squeezing his eyes shut and scrunching up his face, concentrating on not making too much noise.

****

His head is still spinning, stuck somewhere between fantasy and reality, unsure which is which. But he keeps his eyes on the sink, where blood paints the water pink.

****

Everything’s fuzzy. Like the whole world is blurred around the edges.

****

And yet, the one thing that’s clear is Lance’s voice. It comes from just outside the door, but still sounds far away. “Keith, hey, are you okay in there? I’ve got Chinese takeout and trashy movies out here, you think you’re gonna come join me on the other side any time soon?

****

Keith fumbles with the faucet knob, shutting the water off. The cut is still flowing red, his knuckles already purpling, but he says, more frantic than he’d hoped, “Fine - I’m - I’m fine, Lance, just. Go - go make plates or something, I’ll be out.”

 

It doesn’t even sound convincing to his own ears. And evidently not to Lance’s either. “You don’t sound fine, Keith.” Concern practically drips from his words. “Did something happen? What’s wrong?”

****

Keith ignores him, yanking a towel off the rack and wrapping his hand in it. The towel turns red not long after.

 

And then Lance is pounding on the door, shakily calling, “Keith, please, you’re kinda freaking me out here. Just - just tell me what’s wrong, babe, and we can fix it, okay? Please?”

 

“Dammit,” Keith mutters, then raises his voice. “Lance -”

 

“ _Keith_ ,” Lance says over him, “please. Just open the door.”

****

“But -”

 

“I won’t be mad or anything, promise. But you’ve gotta open the door.”

 

Keith breathes in, holds it for a few seconds, breathes out. Wipes at his eyes once more and swings the door open, careful to keep the towel around his hand.

****

Lance takes in the tear tracks on Keith’s face, the red towel that was once gray, the blood splotches on the tiles, and the shattered mirror, says, “Oh, Keith,” and pulls Keith out of the bathroom. Lance steps carefully around the glass on the floor to grab a first-aid kit that Keith hadn’t even noticed out of the medicine cabinet, not letting go of Keith’s wrist, then steps back out.

****

Keith allows himself to be led to the kitchen in silence, too tired and woozy to protest. Lance walks him over to the kitchen sink, flips the water on, and turns to Keith. Wordlessly, he takes Keith’s hand in his, unwraps the towel, and examines Keith’s palm, running his thumb over the cut and smearing blood along Keith’s skin.

****

Then Lance looks up at him with this sympathetic expression, and Keith can’t stand the softness in Lance’s eyes. He hates when people look at him like that. Like they feel sorry for him. Like he’s just something else to pity.

****

But Lance says, “Do you want to talk about it?” and actually drops it when Keith shakes his head. And maybe the look in his eyes isn’t pity. Compassion, perhaps. Or even understanding.

****

Keith isn’t sure which is worse.

****

Lance murmurs apologies every time Keith hisses in pain, mostly from reflex, but is otherwise silent as he rinses the blood off both of Keith’s hands. Keith barely even notices the sting of the disinfectant spray, too out of it to process the pain. He’s not sure how much time passes before Lance is pulling him over to the couch, bandages, medical tape, and a pair of tweezers in hand and a new towel pressed to Keith’s palm. Lance pushes him gently onto the couch, then sits next to him, still quiet.

****

Keith wants to thank him for not prying, but at the same time he wishes Lance would.

****

This all still feels fake, somehow. As if the both of them are just going through the motions.

****

Maybe none of this is real.

****

Lance lays Keith’s right hand on his lap, unrolls the bandages, starts to wrap Keith’s hand. His face is scrunched up in concentration, lips pursed in thought, and  _damn_ , Keith doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve this beautiful, wonderful, amazing boy who’s spending his Friday night tending to Keith’s self-inflicted wounds.

****

Keith says, “Lance.” Lance glances up at him, then back at his hand. Keith counts the seconds in his head, makes it to thirty-four before he can’t take it anymore.

 

“Lance _,_ ” Keith says again, waits for Lance to finish wrapping and turn his full attention to Keith. “I’m sorry, okay?”

 

Lance stares at him for a long moment before shaking his head. “Don’t be,” is all he says.

****

Sighing, Keith gives Lance his other hand, watches Lance pick up the tweezers and try to decide how best to go about this. He runs his other, newly bandaged hand through his hair, and says, “Lance…listen, it’s not - this isn’t -” Keith doesn't know enough about what this  _is_ to even decide what it  _isn't._

****

“Keith,” Lance cuts in, quiet but firm, “you know you can talk to me, right? About this - whatever this is - or anything else, okay? And if you…if you need help, we can -”

****

“I don't need a  _shrink_ ,” Keith snaps. “What I  _need_ is for you to _listen to me._ ”

****

“I’m listening, Keith! I’m always listening, I've always  _been_ listening!”

****

“No, you haven't,” Keith says, frustration beginning to boil over. “You haven't heard a word I’ve been saying, Lance.”

****

“Then  _tell me_. Whatever's going on, just tell me,” Lance pleads. “I'm listening now, I am.”

****

Tears blur Keith's vision, still; Keith blinks them away, looking anywhere but at Lance, swallows hard, and breathes, “What if it's too late?”

****

If it is, then…well, that's that. No use in trying to fix a problem that no longer has a solution.

****

Keith still isn't totally sure that he even understands what the problem is in the first place.

****

But this all feels so  _phony,_ like Keith could tug at a single thread and the whole world would unravel. What's underneath that, is another question that Keith can't be bothered to answer right now.

****

This isn't real, he’s almost certain of it, but if this isn't reality, then what is?

****

And then Lance’s fingers touch Keith’s cheek, turning his face until Keith is looking at him again. Lance tucks a strand of hair behind Keith’s ear, gentle and sweet, and whispers, “Sunshine, what's wrong?”

****

_Don't cry,_ Keith tells himself.  _Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry._

****

_Don't forget._

****

_“_ If I tell you,” Keith says, “you have to promise to just - just hear me out, okay? Please, don’t say anything or - or jump to conclusions until I'm done, alright?”

****

“Okay.”

****

“Take the glass out of my hand first?”

****

Lance makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “Yeah, okay.”

****

Keith opens his mouth again, then closes it. Worries his lip for a moment and then says, “And Lance?”

****

“Yeah?”

****

“I’m still sorry.”

****

Silence, and then: “I know.”

****

_No,_ Keith thinks,  _you don't._

 ****  


 

Twenty minutes later, once his knuckles are glass-free and wrapped in medical tape, Keith sits with his knees pulled to his chest and Lance’s hand loosely gripped in his, trying to gather himself enough to even begin.

****

Thankfully, Lance is patient enough to let Keith take his time., running his thumb lightly along Keith’s knuckle. Keith closes his eyes, tries to focus enough to get his story straight. He still isn’t even sure what his story is.

 

Neither of them speaks for around three minutes, and even then, all Keith can get out is, “I’m sorry.”

 

Lance squeezes his hand, careful not to hurt him, a silent reassurance, and Keith can barely breathe. He’s choking on words unsaid and maybe -

****

Maybe he shouldn’t do this.

****

What if he didn’t? What would happen then? He’s supposed to do this, fix this,  _bring Lance back_ , but…he kind of likes it here. With Lance. It’s nice, here, on Earth, with - with family.

****

With this boy sitting next to him, holding his hand, reminding him to breathe.

****

But that same boy is counting on him, back in  _reality,_ to save him. Not only that, Keith’s whole team is relying on him. The entire fucking  _universe_ is relying on him.

****

He  _has_ to do this, as much as he wishes he didn’t.

****

Keith takes a deep breath.

****

“This is going to sound crazy,” he says, wrapping his free arm around his knees, “and I - I’ll understand if you don’t believe me, Lance, but…”  _Just do it. Rip the bandage off._ “This isn’t real.”

****

“…What?”

 

“Wait, just - just let me explain.” Keith can’t look Lance in the eyes, so he stares at the chips in his nail polish instead. He tries to keep his voice level. “It’s - something happened, you were…you were captured.”

****

The story gradually pieces together as he talks, the puzzle slowly but steadily filling itself in. “A mission went wrong, we were split up, and - and we tried to save you but…you were gone.”

****

_And I was there and I could’ve saved you I should’ve saved you I should’ve -_

****

Keith digs his fingernails into his thigh. Lance’s fingers tighten around his, Keith ignoring the pain of Lance’s sweaty palm pressing up against his cut. He can feel Lance’s hand shaking. “It took two weeks to find you, and when we did, you were unconscious. Allura and Coran - they ran test after test after test and tried their damndest to wake you up, but they came up with nothing.” There’s a pit in the bottom of Keith’s stomach, because he knows. He  _knows_ that, once he tells this story, this’ll all be over. As soon as he says it out loud, this world really will be a lie.

****

Worst of all, he’ll lose Lance.

 

_You were gone and I wasn’t and it should’ve been me it should’ve been me -_

****

He stops for a moment, taking a couple deep breaths to steady himself, forces himself to continue, grinding the words out. “They - they realized, eventually, that you were…stuck, essentially. In your head, somewhere, in a sort of dream world. Here.” He hears Lance suck in a breath. And, buried somewhere underneath that, is that little voice, the whisper of  _should’ve been me._

****

“The only way to - to wake you up was to project someone else’s consciousness into your - your dream world  _thing._ ” Keith finally glances over at Lance, whose gaze is focused somewhere on the wall in front of him. Lance’s grip has gone slack. “I, uh. I volunteered.”

****

That makes Lance look at him, and Keith can immediately see that Lance doesn’t believe him. There’s confusion and concern in his eyes, and he looks almost as nervous as Keith feels. Lance releases Keith’s hand to reach out and brush a tear from under Keith’s eye; Keith hadn’t even realized he was crying, yet again. God, he’s pathetic.

****

_I don’t deserve to cry over this it’s my fault I should’ve saved you it’s my fault -_

****

“Well,” Lance says, swallowing hard, “it’s not the  _craziest_ thing I’ve ever heard.”

 

“It’s not crazy  _at all_  -”

****

“Keith, I don’t -” His leg bounces quickly up and down, a telltale sign of Lance’s nerves. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say, I - I’ve seen a lot of weird shit, but this - is insane.”

 

“Lance -”

****

“I want to believe you, but -”

 

“But you don’t.”

****

“I -” And then Lance is leaning forward and peering at Keith’s face, or at something  _on_ Keith’s face. Keith pulls back instinctively. “Have you been sleeping?”

 

“I - don’t change the subject.”

  
“ _Keith._ ” Lance gives him this look, the  _come on, Keith, you can’t solve your problems by burying them in denial and pretending they don’t exist_ look that Keith  _swears_  he practices. “You do know that hallucinations can be caused by sleep deprivation, yes?”

 

Keith gapes. “Halluci-- I’m not  _hallucinating,_ Lance. And I’m not  _crazy_ , for that matter.”

****

Lance holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Not hallucinating and definitely not crazy. Got it. It’s just -” He rolls his eyes toward the ceiling, seemingly searching for some  _plausible_ explanation. “If you’re not hallucinating and this isn’t something you - you dreamed up or something, then I’ve - I’ve got nothing.”

 

Keith wraps his arms around his torso, curling in on himself slightly. “So what, there’s absolutely no way I’m telling the truth?”

 

_Why should he believe me? Even if he did, why should he go with me?_

****

_I caused this I fucked up it’s my goddamn fault you deserve better than this -_

****

“Shut up,” Keith mutters.

****

“Excuse me?”

 

 _Fuck. “_ ”Not - not you,” Keith says, completely aware that this doesn’t exactly make him sound any more credible.

****

“Right…” Lance huffs a sigh and then his voice and his expression soften, and he moves one leg onto the couch and twists around to face Keith dead on, placing a hand on Keith’s knee. “Look. Keith. Sweetheart, babe, sugarplum.” Despite himself, Keith feels his cheeks burn. “Is there anything, anything at all, I can say to convince you to see a therapist?”

****

“ _No_ ,” Keith snaps, indignant.

****

“Figured,” Lance says resignedly. “Okay. Okay, then.”

****

Keith rubs his face with his hands, leaning back on the couch. “Lance. Please. I'm - God, I  _know_ it sounds ridiculous. I know the easiest explanation is that I'm losing it, but goddammit, just - just consider, for a second,  _what if I’m not.”_

****

This time, the silence is tense. Lance opens his mouth, then closes it again. Says slowly, “Say that I…that I did believe you. I’m not saying I do, just…if I did, what would happen now?”

****

The knot in Keith’s chest loosens ever so slightly. “Um. To - to get out of here, you’d have to  _actually_ believe me. Once you believe that this - this world - isn’t real, it’ll…fall apart.”

 

Lance stares at him. And stares and stares and stares. Keith squirms under his gaze, fidgeting with the hem of his -  _Lance’s_ \- t-shirt. Eventually, the hand on his knee is removed and Keith hears Lance take a deep breath. He still can’t look at him. 

 

Lance says, “I’ll have more questions later, I’m sure, but for now, just. Whatever’s going on here, forget about it for a second and just tell me - this -  _us_ \- we’re real, right?”

 

The words are tumbling out of Keith’s mouth before Lance even finishes. “I - yes. Yes, of course, Lance, this - we’re real. Promise.”

****

Lance nods, the worry in his face clearing just a little. “Okay. Good.” Keith slides his hand across the couch until his fingers just barely graze Lance’s. And he knows - knows that they can handle this, as long as they’re doing it together. Thinks that maybe, just maybe, after all this is over, they’ll be okay.

****

He leans over and presses his lips lightly to Lance’s. Time seems to stop as Keith waits, hopes, and silently pleads for Lance to kiss him back.

****

And after a long, agonizing moment, Lance does.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**_Day 8_ **

 

Keith wakes curled up on Lance’s chest, with his boyfriend’s arms circled around his waist.

 

“Oh good, you’re awake,” is the first thing he hears as he blinks his eyes open, yawning softly. He could get used to this, waking up with Lance, though his neck does ache from sleeping on the couch. He thinks he’s drooled on Lance’s shirt, because his cheek is sticking, and Lance’s hands are on his back and in his hair. Keith feels more secure than he can recall feeling for quite a long time.

 

Keith folds his arms under his chin, stares up at Lance. He could sit like this for hours on end, he thinks, until Lance says his name in this despondent sort of way that has Keith wondering what the hell gave him that tone.

 

And then he remembers.

 

He remembers what he told Lance the night before, remembers the way that Lance looked at him when he did. And with these memories comes his descent back to the present - back to the dried tear tracks on his face, the dull pounding in his head, the brush of the bandages on his hands against the fabric of his pants.

 

Back to the way Lance is looking at him  _now_ , and to the words that fill the air but have gone fuzzy by the time they reach Keith’s ears.

 

“Lance, don’t,” Keith croaks out, shifting to bury his face in Lance’s shirt. “Please, just - for a few minutes, just leave it.”

 

Lance’s fingers tighten in Keith’s hair, loosen again. He whispers, “Okay,” and relaxes a little.

 

Keith can feel Lance’s heartbeat against his ear, and he counts out a  _one, two, three, four_ beat along with it. Sighing, he traces circles into the curve of Lance’s collarbone, lets himself get lost in the feeling of Lance’s hands on him.

 

For a few minutes, they just lay there, together.

 

For a few minutes, Keith can forget just how messed up his life has gotten.

 

For a few minutes, Keith is content to just be.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s ruined, rather quickly, when Lance evidently decides he’s had enough.

 

He sits up abruptly, forcing Keith to jerk upright and slide off Lance’s lap. Lance leans against the armrest, pulls his legs to his chest, fixes his gaze somewhere on the wall.

 

Keith had seen this coming, really. He never expected it to be easy - nothing ever is for him, especially not when it regards Lance. But he’s going to fix it.

 

He has to.

 

“Lance,” Keith says, sees the barely-there flinch Lance gives. Chews on his already-ragged bottom lip, starts to run a hand through his hair and stops when the bandages catch in the strands. Lance doesn’t look at him. “Are you okay?”

 

Lance snorts derisively, snaps back, “Are you?”

 

“No,” Keith says, feigning casualness. “Haven’t been since you were captured, really.”

 

Lance’s eyes close tightly and his fingers tug on his earlobe - a nervous habit Keith recognizes, one of the little details that crossed over from the real world.

 

_The real world._

 

For the first time in days, Keith wonders what’s going on back in reality.

 

He wonders if, perhaps, his friends are worried because he hasn’t woken up. Or if it hasn’t yet been long enough to scare them. If they’re handling things okay - missions, battle, their own health. If Pidge and Allura have been sleeping. If Hunk is still angry with Pidge, angry with Keith himself. If Coran is still doing his best to take care of them or if he’s finally cracked as well. If Shiro has found a way to stop blaming himself for all of this.

 

Now that Keith can remember the real world - though certain details are still a bit hazy - he also remembers just how much the team fell apart without Lance. How much  _he_ fell apart without Lance.

 

He wishes he’d tried harder to fill in the gap, when Lance was captured. Taken care of his teammates, like Lance would’ve, like Lance  _has,_ instead of causing them more pain.

 

He’s more than making up for it now, though.

 

“Haven’t you noticed  _anything_  weird about this world?” Keith asks. He’d cross his fingers if his fingers had that much wiggle room. “There’s gotta be something, Lance, just humor me.”

 

“There’s you,” Lance replies, but there’s a lilt in his voice, a falter in his demeanor that doesn’t go unnoticed.

 

_Gotcha._

 

Keith files this away for future reference, but leaves it alone for now.  _Fair,_ he thinks, says aloud, “Are you gonna be like this all day?”

 

“I’m considering.”

 

Keith rolls his eyes, resigned. Oddly enough, he’s more comfortable now than he was when he actually thought this was real. Lance, on the other hand, has never looked less secure.

 

Lance sniffs from across the couch and says, “Did you sleep well last night?”

 

_Still on that, huh?_

 

“Yes.”

 

“And you still -”

 

_“Yes.”_

 

Lance nods tiredly, rolls his eyes up to the ceiling, gives a dull hum in the back of his throat. And then he’s standing, rolling his shoulders and stretching a little, then walking briskly away from the couch. For a moment, Keith thinks he’s gonna walk right out the front door, but Lance heads to the kitchen and jerks the refrigerator door open.

 

“Breakfast?” he calls back to Keith.

 

Apparently they’re taking the  _go about the day and pretend everything’s just fine_  route. This is exactly the kind of thing Keith tends to avoid, preferring to face his problems head-on, but if this is how Lance wants to be, then fine.

 

“Sure,” Keith replies, and his thumb presses into the bandages on his hand, into the cut on his palm. The pain has lessened, but the ache is still there, still manages to drown out the pounding in Keith’s skull.

 

Lance sets about making breakfast, and his movement are mechanical, robotic.

 

It’s going to be a very, very long day.

  


* * *

 

 

Breakfast is a quiet, awkward affair.

 

Lance barely speaks and Keith doesn’t bother trying to start conversation. Neither of them eat much - Lance is too busy avoiding Keith’s gaze, while Keith spends much of the meal waiting for the other shoe to drop.

 

By the time the both of them have finished pushing their food around on their plates, Keith’s palm aches.

  


* * *

 

 

“We need to talk.”

 

Four words that should never be put together in this particular order. Words that no kid ever wants to hear. Words that always lead to something that nobody wants to hear. Words that always, always,  _always_ mean something’s wrong.

 

Keith has heard those words too many times to even count, and the ensuing conversations usually leave him shellshocked.

 

“Okay,” Keith says, perched carefully on the couch next to Lance. He does notice how Lance scoots, ever so slightly, away from him. He doesn’t call Lance on it.

 

For a whole three hours after breakfast, neither of them spoke to each other. They just sat there, mindlessly watching whatever was on TV and staring at each other when the other wasn’t looking.

 

“I don’t understand, Keith,” Lance says, fingers playing with the hem of his shirt. “None of this makes any sense, and I don’t know what you want from me.”

 

“Lance -”

 

“No, wait, just -” Lance runs a hand down his face, huffs a loud sigh. His eyes are tired when he finally looks at Keith. “Tell me the story again.”

 

“The - oh.” Keith really doesn't want to go over this again. It was hard enough the first time, when the details were still hazy, but now…

 

Now, he can remember much more clearly, and he wishes he couldn't.

 

“It, uh - we went on a recon mission on this one planet - I can't remember the name - and you were so excited because the planet had something like an ocean,” Keith grinds out, with more than a little difficulty, huffing a harsh laugh. The words are catching in his throat, but he forces them out. “We - we were ambushed. We thought the planet was Galra-free, but they took us by surprise and we - our Lions were back on the ship because we weren’t supposed to need them, and Shiro - he - he had us split up.”

 

It’s torture, trying to piece the story together, trying to get the words from his brain to his mouth. Lance is tense next to him - Keith hopes the story is ringing some sort of bell in Lance’s head, but, chances are, all of this is going in one ear and out the other.

 

“You, Pidge, and I went to find the Galra base. Pidge broke off from us to see if she could find the information we came there for.” Keith’s voice keeps cracking. “You and I went to search for any prisoners. You were - you were cracking jokes and teasing me and making light of it all, and I remember wondering how you did it, how you still joked around, even in the middle of an mission.

 

“We did find prisoners, after a million dead-ends and wrong turns, but -” He’s trembling, just a little. When Keith glances at him, Lance has his fingernails in his thigh, and his eyes are glassed over. Keith takes a shaky breath and continues. “There were s-soldiers. We got the prisoners out, but they, uh…the soldiers, they tried to stop us from getting out. You created a distraction, while I got the prisoners to Red.

 

“When I turned around, they - they’d h-hurt you.” He’s not crying, he refuses to cry. Not this time. He can’t, he has to get through this. If his thumb presses deeper into his palm, then, well, that’s his problem. “You - you were still trying to - to fight, but you’d l-lost your bayard, and - and I t-tried, I tried so hard, Lance, I -”

 

He cuts himself off, covering his mouth with his hand. The tears are welling up in his eyes, but he won’t let them fall. “I couldn’t save you, I didn’t save you - I’m s-sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, I didn’t -” His hand is bleeding, again, and he’s dry-sobbing. The pain in his hand is half-there - he feels it, but only just - until Lance wraps one arm around his shoulders and uses the other to pry Keith’s hands apart.

 

Keith is still blubbering incoherent apologies, his head fuzzy, and gripping at Lance’s shirt, as Lance cards his hands through Keith’s hair and tries to tell him that it’s okay, even when it’s not.

 

It’s so very much  _not okay_.

 

They both know it. But Lance keeps saying it anyway, as if he’s trying to convince himself.

 

* * *

  


_What happens now?_ _  
_

 

It’s a question that Keith has asked himself many, many times since he dove into this world, since Lance’s rescue, since Lance’s capture. It’s a question that, despite never being voiced aloud, has had many answers in the past few weeks, most of which were given, albeit nonverbally, by Lance. It’s a question that has lingered in the back of Keith’s mind ever since Lance first kissed him, in the dead of night, on the castleship’s observation deck, with only the hum of the ship and the taste of salty tears to remind them what’s real.

 

It’s a question that Keith asks now - out loud, this time -

 

“What happens now?”

 

\- and receives nothing but the tightening of arms around him and a kiss to the top of his head in response to.

 

It’s hard to tell what Lance is thinking - even more so than usual. Lance has always been pretty good at hiding his emotions, which Keith knows only because he’s seen Lance without his mask, without his facade, on the rare occasions when Lance lets him. No one would ever even know Lance was hurting if he really didn't want them to because he would rather suffer alone than admit he needs help.

 

Keith likes to think he's gotten pretty good at reading Lance, but the boy is still made of sharp lines and sharper contradictions. What’s right one time is wrong the next, and what’s there one minute is gone the next.

 

Sounds a lot like Keith’s reality, nowadays.

 

Ironic, huh?

 

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say,” Lance admits, quietly, and it sounds like it pains him to say. “It’s - I…I believe you.”

 

Keith perks up at that - but no, if Lance really,  _truly_  believed him, this would be over already.

 

And then Lance continues and Keith understands. “I believe that your story is real - at least that it’s real to you. It’s real to you and that should be enough, but I - I just -”

 

Keith shifts, moving off of Lance’s lap and pulling out of his embrace, sees the turmoil in Lance’s eyes, thinks maybe they’re getting somewhere. Lance is trying, at least, to see things from a different angle, to look at it with an open mind. Lance is trying.

 

“The thing is, I can’t even find fault in your story. Well, other than the obvious, of course, but - you know, we’ve seen a lot of shit and - if we’d lived normal fucking lives, then I wouldn’t have any reason to even entertain the notion of - but if we’d lived normal lives, then we wouldn’t be having this damn conversation in the first place.” Lance laughs this harsh, sardonic laugh, and Keith wishes, not for the first time, that he could do more for Lance. “I mean, the way you talk about it - it’s - I want to believe you, even if it’s just because I know it’ll hurt you even more if I don’t.”

 

Keith, absurdly, finds himself wondering if this is how relationships usually work, basing decisions on whether or not it’ll hurt the other. Having never really had time for relationships, Keith actually does not know. He’s leaning toward yes, given the little bit of evidence he does have.

 

He stays quiet as Lance works toward wrapping his head around the idea that his reality actually isn’t reality at all. Lance is still messing with his shirt, but it’s a little less absent-minded and a little more agitated now, as if the fabric is starting to feel wrong. Like it has, to Keith, for days. Like the little details of this world are throwing him off now.

  
_Progress_ , Keith thinks.

 

“Can I ask you something?” Lance says after a stretch of silence.

 

“Shoot.”

 

Lance crosses his legs underneath him, contemplates for a long moment. When he opens his mouth, he seems tentative, but resolute. “What is - I mean, what’s it like? In that - in your world, in -”

 

 _The real world_ goes unsaid, Lance coughing a little to cover up his slip-up. His voice softens. “What am I like, in that world? What are - what are  _we_ like?”

 

Finally, a question Keith actually has the answer to.

 

“Well, it’s - it’s not like this, to say the least.” 

 

And there it is -

 

“We’re still fighting the war, for one. Uh, right now - well, it’s not good right now. You’re out of commision and the team is…falling apart, a little. But it was going well before this - this whole mess.

 

“You’re the same. You know, it’s still  _you._ Both of these worlds - it’s still you, so you’re the same. Us, though - we’re…friends. We’re on way better terms than we started off on, but if - if you’re asking whether we’re together or not - we’re not.”

 

\- the cold truth. That this world may be fake, but it’s so, so much easier than reality.

 

It’s been nice, to not be fighting a war for a while. To have a house, a roommate, a  _throw pillow._ To be with the boy he’s wanted to be with for so long but never been allowed the right circumstances. To just be a teenager, for once.

 

Lance hums like he’d expected this, or at least considered it an option, says, “But we want to be.” It’s not a question.

 

Keith picks at a loose string on his new bandages, the seams unraveling in his fingers. He feels like he’s unraveling, too.

 

This is it, this is why it’s been so damn  _hard_ to tell Lance. Sure, he had to figure out how, and sure, there was that time when he totally forgot why he was here, but a big part of  _why_ is just that this world is so peaceful and nice and domestic, and maybe Keith doesn’t want to go back.

 

He could stay here, with Lance, and just be. Be a teenager, be in love, be a normal human being. It’s  _nice_ here. Safe.

 

“We do.”  _So much._  “It’s just - circumstances, Lance. We’re fighting a war. We don’t exactly have time for - for relationships.”

 

But they do here.

 

“Because saving the world takes precedence,” Lance says.

 

Keith nods mechanically.

 

_Saving the world takes precedence._

 

_Right._

 

“It has to - people are relying on us, and relationships, feelings, it’d all just…complicate things.”

 

_People are relying on us._

 

And that’s it right there - he’s got people counting on him. He’s never really had that before - no one’s ever  _needed_ Keith. He’s not reached the point on self-deprecation where he thinks no one’s ever wanted him, either, but it’s true that he’s never really been  _needed_ before. Not by parents, not by friends, and definitely not by the whole universe.

 

“That sucks ass.”

 

Keith snorts. “Yeah. Yeah, it really does.”

 

There’s another, only slightly uncomfortable, silence. Keith is chewing a hole in the inside of his cheek, while Lance mulls over this new information.

 

And then slowly, hesitantly, Lance says, “So if…if this all was - if this all was true and I believed you and I went with you…we wouldn’t get to be together?”

 

He sounds so  _sad_ , so  _disappointed._ And Keith has always thought that, in reality, there was no way for them to be together. Eight days ago, Keith would’ve said, with no little certainty, that no, they can’t.

 

But eight days ago, Keith was sitting in the medbay, watching Lance’s chest move steadily up and down, as if he were only sleeping.

 

Keith was a different person eight days ago.

 

And now -

 

Well, now, Keith thinks maybe it’d be worse to try to pretend they aren’t…whatever they are.

 

“We could…try, I guess,” Keith answers, surprising even himself. Lance is looking at him like he’s grown a second head, like he wasn’t actually expecting Keith to concede this. To give in. To stop using  _robot_ as a synonym for  _soldier._

 

“I can’t make any promises, but we can try.”

 

“Well, lucky for you, Keith, relationships aren’t built on promises,” Lance replies, smiling for the first time in - in a while.

 

“What are they built on, exactly, then?”

 

It’s a joke question, a fall-back to their usual teasing and banter, but Lance takes it as a serious question, and he gets this look in his eyes that Keith can’t even describe. It’s soft. Fond. Maybe a little sad.

 

“They’re built on love. Friendship. Mutual attraction.” Lance stops for a moment, seems to realize something. And he laughs, as if he’s conceding, giving in, just like Keith did. “They’re built on trust, Keith.”

 

Keith stares at him.

 

“I trust you,” Lance says. “And I - I can’t say that I believe you, not yet, at least, but…I trust you, Keith.”

 

“…What are you saying?”

 

“I’m saying - well, I’m asking, really -” Lance places a hand on Keith’s ankle, and Keith glances between Lance’s face and where their skin touches, feeling just like he did the first time he stepped foot in one of the Garrison’s spaceships. “What happens now?”

 

And maybe - just maybe - this is better than flying.

 

* * *

 

  
Keith wasn’t given instruction for this part.

 

Well, really, he wasn’t given instruction for much of anything, but it’d be especially nice to know how he’s supposed to handle this next bit. Earlier, when he asked if there was anything weird about this world, Lance was clearly either unsure or hiding something. He figures he’ll piggyback off that and see if he can dig up anything.

 

He and Lance have moved from the couch to the kitchen table, so they can sit across from each other. Keith has to twist his fingers into his shirt to keep from reaching for Lance’s hand. He’s not totally sure where the boundaries lie, but Lance’s hands are curled into fists atop the table, and Keith can practically see the wall between the two of them.

 

Keith tugs on the ends of his too-long hair, watches Lance clench and unclench his hands. Focuses, as best he can, on the sound of Lance’s breathing, tries to match it to his own.

 

_Patience yields focus._

 

One more deep breath, and then Keith says, “Listen, I’m almost as in the dark as you are about this, so…I’m just gonna do what Allura said and try to - to find the inconsistencies in this world. I just need you to answer my questions and we’ll go from there. Okay?”

 

He’s not totally certain just what he’s looking for, but the human brain can only hold so much - maybe there’s some puzzle pieces missing. It’d be a little harder to believe this world was real if there were a bunch of unfillable blanks. Everything between now and where they’re at in the real world had to be painted into this world, and maybe some things were more skimmed over than others.

 

“Okay.”

 

 _Easy enough._ “Right, well - uh, we’ll start slow, so…when did you -  _we_ , I guess - buy this house?”

 

“January 2nd of last year.”

 

Keith can’t exactly fact-check that, but Lance answered so quickly and confidently that Keith just takes it as fact and moves on.

 

“How did we get the money for this, anyway?”

 

Lance snorts derisively. “Government paid us off for our _troubles_.”

 

Not surprising.

 

“How long’s it been since you saw your family?”

 

“About two weeks, I think?”

 

“What’s that scar on your face from?”

 

Lance visibly winces, hand automatically going up to his cheek. Keith almost regrets asking, until Lance says, “Got drunk with Pidge, played Truth or Dare. Ended up trying to eat a stapler, I think? It’s hazy, but there was definitely a stapler involved.”

 

This is…also not surprising. Ridiculous and a little disappointing, sure, but not surprising.

 

Moving on.

 

“When did we decide to move in together?” Keith’s actually curious.

 

“Ah, you were upset about going home - back to Earth, I mean - because you didn’t exactly have anything to - to go home to. You were trying to pretend you were fine, but it was obvious that you weren’t - to me, at least - and I’d been thinking about asking you to move in with me, so I finally pulled my head out of my ass and asked.”

 

That’s…surprisingly sweet. Keith had half-expected that they’d moved in together on a bet or something, but this is much nicer.

 

Keith nods slowly, half a smile crossing over his face. Real or not, Lance still asked him to move in with him. But this isn’t exactly the answer he’s looking for.

 

“Okay, but  _when_ exactly was this?”

 

Lance’s dreamy smile fades. “Oh, you mean like - uh…I’m not sure - like a few days before…before we…”

 

If this were a game of chess, Keith would’ve just made his first move toward inevitable victory.

 

“Before we what, Lance?”

 

His words jolt Lance, whose eyes had glassed over, back to the present. Lance opens his mouth, closes it again, looks confused and a little bit scared.

 

And then it’s like a lightbulb goes off in Lance’s head. “Before we went on our last mission! Duh, I knew that, I just -” he cuts his eyes away from Keith, bites down on his bottom lip - “- blanked for a second, is all. Next question?”

 

 _Now we’re getting somewhere_ , Keith thinks. And then, going out on a limb, he asks, “When did we get back to earth?”

 

Lance looks at him like he’s crazy for a long time. Keith does his best not to shrink under Lance’s gaze, until this sick sense of realization crosses over Lance’s face and his eyes lock on absolutely nothing.

 

He can practically see the gears turning in Lance’s head, trying to find an answer, not only to Keith’s question but to the question of how he could  _not remember this._

 

“Um,” Lance says, after a while, brows knitting together in confusion and frustration. “It’s. It was…we came back a while before we moved in together, so…it was…”

 

He trails off, fear bright in his eyes. One of his hands comes up to tug on his ear, the other tapping a mindless, nerve-induced rhythm.

 

Keith untwists his fingers from his shirt and reaches over to put a gentle hand on Lance’s wrist. Lance jerks away like he’s been burned, and Keith tries not to be hurt. Succeeds, mostly.

 

Lance is talking, and the fear in his eyes translates into his voice, too. “I know this. I know - I should know this, Keith.”

 

 _Why don’t I know this?_ goes unsaid.

 

Keith doesn’t let him spiral - not yet, at least. He needs more than just this - there’s got to be more. “How long was the war? How long were we away from Earth, Lance?”

 

“I - it was -” Lance stares down at his hands, which shake, rather violently, on the table. “I don’t know! Why don’t I - I should know this!”

 

_Check._

 

“How did we even win the war, Lance?”

 

“I - I don’t - I don’t  _know!_ ”

 

_And mate._

 

“Because it’s not  _real!”_ Keith shouts, pushing up from his chair, hands slamming on the table - maybe a little harder than necessary because  _damn_ , it hurts. Lance’s head jerks up toward him, and Keith can see it in his eyes.

 

He believes him.

 

Lance’s eyes have welled up with tears, and Keith is struck with the urge to backtrack but bites his tongue, waits for Lance to - to process.

 

The world is starting to go shiny around the edges, and Keith thinks it’s starting to crumble, fall apart. He’s ever so grateful, because he cannot take much more of this, not when they’re so damn close. As nice as this world is, he wants nothing more than to go back.

 

He wants to wake up and see the team - it’s been way longer than Keith was prepared for. He wants to let them reunite with Lance. He wants to be dragged into a team group hug like he always is after a tough mission, because this has been his toughest one yet and he really could use a hug.

 

He wants to apologize to Pidge for snapping at her. He wants to make up with Hunk. He wants to thank Shiro for putting up with his shit. He wants to keep figuring things out with Lance, in the real world.

 

And he wants to save the real world. Because it’s all he has and it’s all he needs and it’s all he’s ever wanted.

 

“I don’t - I don’t understand,” Lance chokes out, tears dripping down his nose.

 

“You do,” Keith tells him, begging, pleading for this to be over. “You have to, Lance.”

 

“But -”

 

“Lance,  _please._ ” Keith takes his hand again, and Lance doesn’t pull away this time. “You have to let go.”

 

Lance shakes his head, grip tightening on Keith’s hand as if he’s trying to hold onto this world through Keith. He says, “I don’t want to,” and it comes out like a sob.

 

“It’ll be okay, Lance.”

 

“I _can’t._ ”

 

“You  _can._ Please, Lance, just - it’ll be okay, I promise.”

 

“You can’t promise that.”

 

It’s true. “But I can promise to be there for you. No matter what.”

 

“…You will?”

 

“I will.”

 

Lance looks down at their joined hands, then slowly around the room, like he wants to remember every detail. Back to their hands, up at Keith.

 

They lock eyes.

 

Keith squeezes Lance’s fingers.

 

Lance takes a deep breath.

 

And lets go.

 

“I believe you.”

 

The world fades.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

When Keith’s vision returns, he’s in space.

 

There’s a moment of panic, a little chunk of time where Keith can’t breathe because he’s in space and he shouldn’t be  _able_ to breathe, so he claws at his throat and holds the air in his lungs until it begins to burn, until it becomes dizzying, until he can’t hold it any longer.

 

And then he releases the air, stuck in a state of disbelief because he’s been through all of this and he  _cannot_ go out like this after everything.

 

When he breathes in, he does not die.

 

He does not choke, he does not pass out. And he does not die.

 

Only once this has processed does he start to check himself for injuries, for missing limbs, for anything and everything else. This is when he realizes that he is standing. He is standing, upright, on solid ground, which would be decidedly impossible - just like breathing - if he were, in fact, in space.

 

So space is out.

 

From there, he forgoes trying to figure out where he is. The fact that he is not back on the castleship is glaringly obvious, but not much else is as easily identifiable. The only thing he can say is that, despite space being ruled out as an option, it sure does look like space. Stars surround him, in varying shades of red and blue and purple, filling in the seemingly-infinite void of black. Pretty, really, once the the shock of it all clears a little.

 

Bit by bit, Keith comes back to himself. He notices the changes in his own body - his hair is shorter and he’s back in his normal outfit, jacket and all. The bandages on his hands are gone, along with the wounds themselves.

 

Eventually, when he’s a bit more aware and he can actually feel the tips of his fingers, Keith turns in a full circle, taking in the vast expanse around him. And the boy crumpled on the ground, a few feet away from him, rocking back and forth with his arms around his knees.

 

Lance.

 

The air may be breathable, but the sight of Lance, here, knocks the wind out of Keith.

 

And then he hears a choked half-sob and jolts back int0 reality (or the equivalent of it).

 

“Lance?” Keith says, walking towards him. Tentatively, like he’s approaching a wild animal. “Are you -”

 

“I’m sorry,” Lance chokes out, one hand moving to tug, hard, on his hair. “I’m sorry, I’m - I didn’t - this wasn’t -”

 

Keith doesn’t let him get any further, kneeling down next to him and pulling him into a tight hug. Lance tenses in his hold, but Keith doesn’t give. He’s never been one for hugging, really, a bit too much vulnerability for his tastes; this, however, sits a little better in Keith’s chest, doesn’t make his heart stutter like usual.

 

“It’s not your fault,” Keith says, because he knows that’s what Lance is telling himself. There’s a sniffle from where Lance’s head rests on Keith’s shoulder. Keith keeps going. “I know that’s what you think, but - Lance, I don’t know how much you remember, now, but it wasn’t your fault, okay? If anything, I should - I should be the one apologizing.”

 

“Don’t.” Lance pulls back slightly, just enough to look Keith in the eyes. His face is blotchy with tears and guilt, but the look he gives Keith is unyielding. “Don’t apologize, Keith. I do - I do remember, and if - if it wasn’t my fault, then it wasn’t yours, either. Clear?”

 

Keith gives an almost-laugh, nodding quickly. “Clear.”

 

There are times when Keith forgets that this is who Lance is - that even when Lance himself is hurting, is ready to crumble and fall apart and break, he’ll still take care of everyone else before himself.

 

It’s part of why Keith fell for him so hard, really.

 

“Are you okay?” Keith asks, eventually.

 

Lance makes a noncommittal noise. “Uh, no. I - well, relatively speaking, I guess I’m okay. But like, really, um - no, I’m just about as far from okay as you can get.”

 

“Understandable,” Keith says, and sits back on his haunches as Lance laughs. “No injuries though? Everything’s intact?”

 

“Uh -” Lance gives himself a quick once-over, wiggling his fingers, pressing his fingertips into his ribcage. He looks surprised at his new-old outfit, but otherwise unfazed. “Yeah, I’m good. You?”

 

“Fine.” Keith looks up again, his hand instinctively shifting to Lance’s knee. There really is nothing, he notes, but empty space around them. “Do you - do you have any idea where we are?”

 

With Keith’s words, Lance seems to just now notice everything around them. There’s no panic - Lance was already breathing just fine, why wouldn’t he be now - but Lance’s hand does go, automatically, to his throat, more out of confusion than fear. Lance spends a long moment just taking it all in before saying, “Er…”

“Right, figured,” Keith mutters.

 

Keith stands up, still a bit wobbly on his feet, offers a hand to Lance. Lance takes it, his grip a little harder than might be necessary, and allows Keith to pull him to his feet.

 

There’s an unspoken agreement not to let go.

 

“So what do we do?” Lance asks, and it’s like he actually expects Keith to have the answer. Not only did Keith not receive an instruction manual for this, but this part wasn’t even  _mentioned._

 

But Lance is looking at him like he’s ready to follow Keith anywhere, and Keith has to do  _something_ here.

 

So he picks a direction and starts walking, yanking Lance with him.

 

“Oh, you - you actually do have a plan, okay.” Lance stumbles to catch up with Keith, falling into step easily. Lance’s palm is sweaty - or maybe that’s Keith’s. “Wanna let me in on it, Keithy-boy, or am I just supposed to go with whatever?”

 

“I,” Keith announces, “do not have a plan.”

 

This, admittedly, is not surprising. Keith never has plans in normal situations, and this definitely is not one of those. Lance gives a resigned, but not actually disappointed sigh.

 

“So we just keep walking, then? Until we find something?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And what if we don’t find anything?”

 

“Then we keep walking.”

 

“I - is that really all you’ve got?”

 

“Lance,” Keith says, “what the fuck did you expect.”

 

Lance is silent. Keith feels like he’s won a game he didn’t want to play.

  


* * *

 

 

It doesn’t take as long as Keith expected for something to go wrong.

 

After about an hour of just wandering, the stars fade out and part in favor of - well, Keith doesn’t actually know.

 

The air is fuzzy, almost like static on a TV screen. Keith can make out figures in the haze, and instinctively reaches for the knife on his hip - which, thankfully, is there. But then Lance stumbles, releasing Keith’s hand in the process, and Keith’s attention is pulled back to him.

  
An unrecognizable look crosses Lance’s face. “Mama?”

 

Keith stares at him for a long moment, but Lance’s gaze is fixed on the fog. Keith turns, still gripping the hilt of his knife; the fog has cleared, somewhat - enough to see who the figures are, and there’s a woman standing in the middle of the mist who looks a lot like Lance.

 

Keith realizes two things, in this moment.

 

One: Keith recognizes this woman from the pictures on dream-Lance’s mantle.

 

Two: this is Lance’s mind.

 

Just when Keith had thought it was all over, they wake up in Lance’s own head.

 

Typical. Just fucking typical.

 

And now Lance is heading toward the mist, half in a trance, eyes glazed over. He’s tripping over his own feet as he moves forward, leaving Keith to scramble after him.

 

Lance doesn’t respond when Keith grabs his wrist, not even glancing back, too focused on the woman in the fog. The woman smiles, softly, fondly, at Lance, beckons to him. Lance tries to keep walking, but Keith yanks him back.

 

“Lance, don’t!”

 

Lance jerks around to face him, wrenching his arm out of Keith’s grip, and he looks ragged, frazzled. “I - I don’t -”

 

“It’s not real, okay?” Keith says, stomach twisting at the way Lance’s face falls. “I’m sorry, Lance, I know it hurts, but you can’t.”

 

The boy glances at his mother, wrapped in a mysterious fog but still  _there_ , and then back at his boyfriend.

 

His face twists into a sneer, the kind Keith hasn’t seen directed at him in quite a while, and Lance spits out, “You don’t know _shit_ , Keith,” with much more malice than Keith could’ve ever expected.

 

“I - excuse me?”

 

“What would you know!” Lance yells, throwing his hands up. “You don’t know  _anything_ about my family, Keith!”

 

Keith holds his hands up, placating, even though he wants nothing more than to punch a wall right now. “No, I don’t, but that’s not -”

“You don’t even  _have_  a family!”

 

And that does it.

 

Keith reels back like he’s been slapped, and it almost feels like he has. The words sting, sharp and metallic, and he takes a jerky step back.

 

The words seem to take a long time to process, for him, but as soon as he realizes what he said, Lance is quick to try to backtrack. “Wait, wait - I didn’t mean - I don’t know why I said that, Keith, please don’t -”

 

“Don’t.” Keith’s voice is quiet, cold, hard. Emotionless. “Just - just don’t.”

 

“Keith, I -”

 

“Go into the creepy fog if you want to, Lance, but leave me the hell out of it.”

 

And with that, Keith ignores Lance’s rushed, pleading apologies, turns on his heel, and walks away.

 

* * *

  


In retrospect, this wasn’t the best idea Keith’s ever had.

 

Which - it’s a pretty low bar to begin with, seeing as Keith’s idea tend to end up with him getting kicked out of school and living in the desert on his own at sixteen - is not exactly surprising, but it  _is_ a little depressing.

 

He’s been wandering around on his own for about a half hour, and now that he’s cooled down a bit, he’s starting to wonder if maybe Lance really didn’t mean to say what he did.

 

Maybe it’s something about this place - Lance’s head - that makes him snap. Or makes him crave his own family so badly that he’ll push Keith away to get it.

 

But god _damn_ , if it doesn’t hurt.

 

Keith aches, so badly, because Lance is both right and wrong. He doesn’t have a family -  _right_. He doesn’t know much about Lance’s family -  _right._  He doesn’t know how Lance feels -  _right._

 

He doesn’t understand what Lance is dealing with, with the vision and the want, the need, for it to be real -  _wrong._

 

Lance wasn’t there, during the trials. With the Blade of Marmora. He doesn’t know what Keith went through, seeing his father like that.

 

Keith  _does_ understand. He understands much more than Lance thinks he does.

 

What he doesn’t understand, however, is how he can walk for a good thirty minutes and not come across anything, whatsoever.

 

He was pissed a half hour ago, sure, but now - well, now he’s more angry about this stupid fucking void of a place.

 

If Lance were here, Keith would probably make a teasing jab about how empty Lance’s head is, but Lance isn’t here and Keith is kind of starting to worry.

 

He doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to even care whether Lance is okay or not, after what Lance said. But Lance is all on his own, just like Keith, and neither of them know where they’re going, or how to escape, or how any of this works.

 

 _Fuck_ , Keith thinks,  _I’m gonna be stuck here forever._

 

As soon as the thought crosses his mind, the air changes.

 

Figures materialize, once again, in the space where the smattering of stars used to be. More than one, this time.

 

Keith’s knife is in his hand in seconds, poised to strike if necessary, though he doesn’t think it will be. The visions, he’s sure, won’t affect him like they do Lance. And anyway, chances are he can’t put a knife through something made of fog.

 

Lance’s mother appears again - Keith knows Lance has mentioned her name a couple times, but he can’t remember right now. Maria, maybe? - but there are more people, this time. From the looks of them, they’re Lance’s siblings.

 

Keith slips his knife back into the sheath, but doesn't take his hand off it.

 

Lance’s siblings - a little boy, maybe around seven, and a young girl, maybe around twelve- and his mother look to be sitting in an auditorium, watching something in the distance. When Keith turns and follows their gaze, he sees a boy, about thirteen or fourteen, who looks a lot like a young Lance.

 

It is a young Lance, he realizes, as the boy shoots a smile identical to Lance’s at his mother. Keith doesn't see the woman’s response, too busy staring at young Lance. The kid is standing on a stage, wearing tight black pants, a white t-shirt, silver sneakers, and a snapback hat.

 

Keith’s confusion lasts only moments, and then the boy is dancing to a song Keith can't hear, popping and locking and flipping in ways Keith would never even attempt.

 

A memory. This is one of Lance’s memories.

 

He doesn't know exactly  _why_ he's standing here watching a young Lance’s dance recital, but the kid is  _good._ Keith didn't even know Lance could dance, let alone nail the moves he's doing in this vision. Unable to hear the music, Keith can't fully gauge how well Lance is doing, but Keith is impressed, nonetheless.

 

Keith makes a note to ask Lance about this some time.

 

It's over soon, young Lance having tossed his hat into the crowd at the end, and there’s silent applause from Lance’s family, who are the only people Keith can see in the crowd. The only people Lance cared about, probably.

 

The vision jumps to what looks to be backstage, after the performance, where Lance accepts flowers from his mother with a bright grin and a hug for each of his family members.

 

Keith forces his feet to move.

 

He doesn't want to see any more of this, doesn't see any reason to stay and watch. Maybe there’ll be something up ahead, if he just gets through this fog, or maybe he'll find Lance, present-day-Lance, who he's still pissed at but more than a little worried about.

 

He could, surely, be walking into something dangerous, as well. He’s not sure what would be dangerous around here, but he's on alert regardless.

 

Keith doesn't really have any better options, though, and so he walks into the fog before he can change his mind.

  


* * *

 

 

What he finds, unfortunately, is not a way out. Or Lance, for that matter.

 

What he finds turns out to be more memories.

 

The fog persists, the farther Keith walks, and the memories come and go. Most are of Lance’s family, little scenes of Lance with his mother, his siblings, his grandparents. He doesn’t see much of Lance’s father, despite him having been in the pictures on dream-Lance’s mantle.

 

Keith can hear snatches of all the memories, now, but it’s still hard to follow any one specific scene. It’s like a bunch of CDs are playing over each other, scene after scene after scene.

 

And then there’s one memory he comes across, where he sees Lance in tears and stops in his tracks.

 

Lance looks to be about eleven, here, standing in what Keith thinks is a train station, holding two of his younger siblings’ hands. Lance’s mother and his other two siblings are there, too. They’re all crying.

 

Keith has watched all of these scenes from a distance, but now all he wants to do is reach out and touch Lance’s shoulder.

 

But then Lance’s face lights up with a bright but teary smile, and a man Keith vaguely recognizes as Lance’s father steps out of a train, rolling a suitcase behind him, and is immediately enveloped in hugs from Lance and his family.

 

And then Keith realizes - Lance’s father is wearing a Garrison uniform.

 

Keith hears bits and pieces of the sobbing and the laughter and the words being exchanged. He catches the words  _two years_ and has to tear his eyes away.

 

Maybe he doesn’t understand.

 

Keith doesn’t let himself dwell on this memory, on Lance’s reunion with his father, on that fact that Lance’s words might be a little truer than Keith thought. Instead, he keeps walking.

 

* * *

 

  
There are memories of the team, as well - ones that Keith does remember, and ones that he doesn’t. The whole team sitting in the castleship’s living room, watching some weird Altean movie, laughing it up at Lance and Pidge’s non-stop stream of sarcastic commentary. Lance, Hunk, and Pidge playing some ridiculously complicated prank on Shiro. Lance and Shiro sitting on the observation deck, talking about something or other- Keith can hear snatches of all of the memories, now, but he still can’t follow their conversation.

 

There are a few of Lance and Keith - sitting in Keith’s room, talking about nothing and everything at the same time; racing their lions and teasing each other over the comms on one of their odd days off; watching the sunset on a planet they’d landed on, Lance’s head resting on Keith’s shoulder and an air of something soft and quiet and sweet between them.

 

These are all good memories, Keith notes. He’s glad that he doesn’t have to watch the bad memories - family issues, mistakes made on the battlefield, the like.

 

Maybe their last mission would be in the mix of bad memories, now that Lance remembers it.

 

Keith won’t, can’t think about that, so he squeezes his eyes shut for a long moment, just long enough to force the thought out of his head. Opens them again and sees the observation deck, sees Lance, sees himself, and freezes.

 

He remembers this one,  _clearly._ Remembers the exact conversation they had, remembers the tired, not-quite-uncomfortable-but-not-quite-companionable silences, too. Remembers the look in Lance’s eyes when -

 

_Keith doesn’t expect anyone to be on the observation deck at this time of night, so he’s more than a little surprised to find Lance sitting there, curled up with his arms around his knees and his back to Keith._

 

_“Lance?”_

 

_The boy jumps and Keith can see him trying to discreetly wipe his eyes with his jacket sleeve. “Oh - oh, hey, Keith! How’s it going?”_

 

_His cheerful tone is much too forced. Keith ignores the question, opting instead to walk over and sit next to Lance, who deliberately angles himself away from Keith, sniffling a little. Keith says, “Couldn’t sleep?”_

 

_“Ah -” Lance glances at him and something seems to give. He deflates somewhat, turns his body slightly more toward Keith. “No.”_

 

_Keith gives a quiet hum. “Nightmares or insomnia?”_

 

_Lance stares at him. “What?”_

 

_“Which one is it - nightmares or insomnia?”_

 

_“Uh…insomnia, I guess. Homesickness.”_

 

_“Do you wanna - ah, do you wanna talk about it?”_

 

_Lance is looking at him like he’s grown a second head. Keith squirms under his gaze, but doesn’t take back his words and doesn’t break eye contact._

 

\- Keith offered his ear. Remembers the lilt in Lance’s voice when he started talking, remembers the glisten of tears on his cheeks when -

 

“ _I guess I’m just - I can’t stop thinking about my family,” Lance says, voice cracking on the last word. “I know we have a - a job to do, a mission and all that, but I - I keep wondering what the Garrison told them. How they explained away to my family that their - that their son was -”_

 

_Lance hiccups, covering his mouth with his hand. Keith doesn’t know what to say, but he cuts in anyway._

 

_“The Garrison’s a shithole,” Keith says, emphatically._

 

_He’s rewarded with a snort from Lance, who runs a hand down his face and replies, “Yeah, that - that’s a given. They probably told me family that I died in like - like a freak accident or -”_

 

_And then he stops, abruptly, and a choked noise comes out of his mouth. Automatically, Keith moves toward him, and his hand is halfway to Lance’s shoulder when Lance says, “My family thinks I’m dead,” and it comes out like a sob._

 

 _The tears start pouring, then. Keith, who’s never,_ ever,  _been good with the whole comforting thing, freezes up for a moment, but eventually does the only thing he can think of and pulls Lance close. Lance barely even seems to notice, just turns to sob into Keith’s shirt sleeve, while Keith squeezes Lance’s shoulder and lets him cry._

 

\- Lance finally broke down. Remembers the feeling of Lance’s hand in his, remembers the taste of salty tears when -

 

_Lance’s hand finds Keith’s free one after a while, fingers tight around his. He’s calmed down some, sobs having died down to sniffles and the occasional hiccup. The positioning got uncomfortable a while back, but Keith has long since relaxed into it._

 

_Despite not being the touchy type, Keith has grown pretty comfortable with having Lance’s hands on him - overexposure made him numb to it, he figures. A casual arm around Keith’s shoulders, fingers grazing his ankle, feet kicking at Keith’s under the table at breakfast. Eventually, he got used to it._

 

 _It became a slightly different story when Keith realized just how_ not-platonic  _his feelings for Lance were, but he doesn’t have it in him to pull away._

 

_After another couple minutes, Lance lifts his head off Keith’s shoulder, shifting away from him and wiping his nose. He curls back up just like he was when Keith walked in, sniffs, and says, “I, uh - thanks.”_

 

_“I didn’t do anything.”_

 

_Lance looks at him again, in the dim light, and Keith wants nothing more than to kiss him. The grid of stars in front of them sparkles, Lance’s hand is still clenched in his, and Keith wants nothing more than to kiss him._

 

_Lance says softly, “You did. You sat here, you listened, you let me cry on your shirt - sorry about that, by the way - you did plenty,” and Keith wants nothing more than to kiss him._

 

_“Uh, yeah, no problem,” Keith says, and then Lance kisses him._

 

\- when Lance kissed him, nothing more than a soft, gentle pressure against Keith’s mouth. Remembers how Lance’s lips felt on his, remembers the glint in Lance’s eyes when -

  
_Lance pulls back sooner than Keith would’ve liked. Keith is still disoriented because Lance_ kissed  _him, but he’s aware enough to ask:_

 

_“What was that for?” It comes out as a breathy whisper. Lance’s forehead is still touching his, and Keith feels more than hears Lance’s quiet laughter. When Lance speaks, Keith feels it on his skin._

 

_“Nothing,” Lance says. “Everything. I don’t know. Does it matter?”_

 

_Keith considers this. “No, I guess not.”_

 

_It’ll matter, eventually. Somewhere down the road, when Keith is sitting in his room and wondering why the hell he didn’t push, wondering what the hell Lance meant by everything and nothing._

 

_But for now, as Lance stands up and offers Keith a hand, tear tracks still visible on his face, Keith decides to leave it the way it is._

 

_Lance holds his hand all the way back to their rooms, and his eyes sparkle when he says, “Goodnight, Keith.”_

 

_“Goodnight, Lance,” Keith says. He doesn’t walk into his room until Lance has already gone into his own._

 

_He falls asleep easy after that, dreams of blue eyes and fond smiles and falling._

 

\- Lance tells him goodnight. Remembers waking up and wondering if it was all a dream, remembers catching Lance’s eye when Lance walked into breakfast, being on the receiving end of one of Lance’s softer smiles, and realizing that  _yes, it was real._

 

This is one of Lance’s good memories.

 

Present-Keith smiles as the memory fades.

 

And then he hears his name.

 

“Keith!”

 

Keith turns - Lance sounds like he’s been calling his name for a while. Probably for the last half hour or so - but doesn’t see Lance. His voice definitely came from behind Keith, but he’s not sure exactly where.

 

There’s a not-so-brief moment when Keith considers just ignoring him and heading in the opposite direction, but even he isn’t  _that_ stubborn. Or stupid, for that matter. He knows they need to stick together, even if Keith technically is the one who split them up in the first place.

 

“Lance?” Keith calls back, cupping his hands around his mouth. He half-expects his voice to echo or something, but it fades out just like normal.

 

A long pause and then, “Keith? Keith, is that you?”

 

“Yeah, it’s - it’s me! Where are you?”

 

“I don’t know - just follow my voice, okay?”

 

“On my way.”

 

Keith starts walking, the noise from the memories fading into the background.

 

Lance keeps talking. “Keith, I - I wanted to apologize. I was  _way_ out of line and I never should’ve said what I said and I’ve been looking for you for like an hour so I can fix it and - and I’m so sorry, Keith, I don’t know what got into me, I -”

 

“Lance, it’s -”

 

“Don’t say it’s okay, because it’s not,” Lance cut him off. His voice is getting closer. “There’s teasing and arguing, and then there’s what I did, and it wasn’t okay. I just - I guess I saw my - my mom, and I was so - it made me so angry that I couldn’t actually go to her and I took it out on you and I’m sorry.”

 

“Forgiven,” Keith says, and Lance’s relieved sigh is audible. He turns just a little and there Lance is.

 

Lance sees him at the same time Keith does. The space between them is closed within seconds, and then Lance’s arms are around Keith’s waist and Keith’s are around Lance’s neck. Keith’s feet come clean off the floor as he clutches at the fabric of Lance’s jacket, never wanting to let go again.

 

Lance, however, has other ideas. He pulls back quickly, practically patting Keith down, while just laughs a little and lets him.

 

Once Lance has assured himself that Keith is all in one piece, Keith grabs his wrists and waits for Lance’s full attention. “I’m sorry, too, you know. I shouldn’t have left, we don’t need to get separated in here.”

 

“It’s okay, we’re together now,” Lance says, shaking out of Keith’s grip. He glances around and Keith follows his gaze - the memories have faded out of view now, leaving Keith and Lance surrounded by stars again. “It’s ironic, you know.”

 

“What is?”

 

“The fact that my own mind looks like fucking space.”

 

Keith laughs, fully this time, and Lance grins at him.

 

Lance sobers up quickly, though, slipping his hand back into Keith’s. This time, Lance is the one pulling Keith along, as he says, “God, it’s only been like a couple hours and I’m already getting tired of this. Let’s see if we can find a way out.”

 

For the time being, everything’s okay.

 

Relatively speaking, that is.

 

* * *

  


It doesn’t last.

 

It never does, really, when it comes to almost anything Keith does. Things’ll be alright for a few minutes, a few days, a few months, even, but everything, inevitably, goes wrong.

 

This is no different.

 

Keith supposes he should’ve seen this one coming - logically, if Lance’s good memories are stored away somewhere, his bad memories have to be as well. And with the way their luck generally goes, there really should never have been any doubt that they’d come across these, too.

 

It’s not even a full half hour before the mist comes into focus again. Keith hears Lance curse under his breath, and Keith stops in his tracks, forcing Lance, who’s still holding his hand, to halt too.

 

“What are you doing?” Lance asks, though he doesn’t seem too against this development.

 

“We should just - just avoid the mist,” Keith says, because they haven’t had the best experiences with it, so why keep trying? “Pick a new direction and go that way instead.”

 

“But -” Lance pauses, glancing back and forth between Keith and the fog and chewing on his bottom lip. “But what if we’re supposed to go through the mist? What if it’s like - like trials or something?”

 

“Trials.”

 

“Yeah! Like, like we have to get through a certain amount of these - these fucking fog things, and then we can go home!”

 

Keith gives him a deadpan look.  _Trials. Really?_

 

But, then again…

 

“Do you have a better plan?”

 

_Well._

 

“Uh, not - not really.”

 

“Exactly! So it’s off through the mist then, huh?”

 

Keith still doesn’t like this. Not at all.

 

“Fine, but -”

 

“No ‘buts’!”

 

“I - no, just. Just don’t let go of my hand, okay? Whatever happens here, just stick together.”

 

Lance nods, solemn. “Right, okay. You ready, then?”

 

 _No,_ Keith thinks.

 

“Yeah,” Keith says, and lets Lance lead him into the fog.

  


* * *

 

 

He’s not sure why Lance is so okay with this. The last time they went into one of these together, Lance practically got brainwashed and they ended up separated. The second one Keith went through wasn’t bad, but he’s still not exactly comfortable with watching all of Lance’s memories, good or not.

 

Lance almost seems numb, like he’s decided that Keith is going to learn a lot more about him than he’d normally be comfortable with, anyway, so they might as well dive headfirst into it. Lance really isn’t as open of a person as he acts like he is, and this is - weird, to say the least.

 

Keith almost asks, but the mist is forming figures,  _yet again_ , and he figures he’s got bigger problems.

 

He tries to focus on Lance’s hand in his, tries not to look at whatever’s going on now, but there’s a sharp intake of breath from beside him, and Keith is forced to look up.

 

He’s watching what looks to be a school dance, with the balloons and the punch and the cheesy dance music, and Lance is standing by the punch bowl, tapping, rather aggressively, at his phone screen.

 

The words on the screen aren’t visible to Keith, but memory-Lance is obviously texting someone. Someone important, apparently, what with the way he’s ignoring the entirety of the dance in favor of his phone.

 

The memory skips ahead, like a broken record, and suddenly Lance is sitting in a bathroom with Hunk kneeling down next to him. Hunk puts a hand on Lance’s knee. Lance stares straight ahead.

 

 _She stood me up,_  says memory-Lance, disbelievingly. _She fucking stood me up at fucking Homecoming, Hunk._

 

Keith doesn’t wait to hear the rest of it - he’s seen enough. He practically has to drag Lance away from the scene, but they’re out of range before Keith has to hear anything more, other than Hunk saying,  _I’m sorry, bro._

 

Despite how many times Lance tries to, Keith doesn’t let him stop, doesn’t let him get caught up in any of the memories. There are a lot of trivial ones - Lance falling off his skateboard and scraping his knee at maybe six years old; Lance slipping during a dance class and getting laughed at by his classmates at maybe ten; Lance getting called on in class at the Garrison and completely botching the answer.

 

But there are plenty of more significant memories, too.

 

Lance having what’s obviously a pretty awful fight with his sister, ending in tears; Lance on a mission that thankfully is not their most recent one, just moments too late to save Pidge from the laser that hits her in the side; Lance tearing open a letter with the Garrison seal on it only to find the words  _Cargo Class_ staring back up at him.

 

Lance and his family, all dressed in black, attending the funeral of someone it takes Keith a long moment to remember is Lance’s father.

 

This time it’s Keith jerking to a stop, gaping at the scene in front of him.

 

Memory-Lance, who’s probably about thirteen, is clearly holding back tears as the funeral service goes on, trying to be strong for the younger kids who cling to his hands and bawl unabashedly. The funeral conductor drones on, something about piloting and bravery and dying young. Keith’s hands shake.

 

“Keith,” present-Lance says, and it’s the desperation in his voice that makes Keith turn. “Keith, please, can we - can we go, I can’t -”

 

“I - yeah,” Keith says quickly, forcing his feet to move away from this. “Sorry - I’m sorry, I didn’t -”

 

“You didn’t know,” Lance finishes for him, voice surprisingly level, now, surprisingly emotionless. “It’s fine, it’s - I don’t wanna talk about it.”

 

“I wasn’t going to ask you to.”

 

Lance glances at him, briefly, then fixes his gaze straight ahead. “Right, well - I mean, it doesn’t matter either way. I - just keep walking, please. I don’t wanna watch all of - all of this.”

 

That’s what Keith was trying to prevent in the first place, but he doesn’t say that. “Yeah, okay.”

 

Lance nods mechanically. It’s like he’s still trying to be strong for someone, like, even here, even when it’s just Keith, he thinks he has to. Keith doesn’t have it in him to tell him otherwise, right now.

 

They walk on in silence, not even looking at a memory long enough to get sucked in. Lance’s fingers are very nearly cutting of the circulation to Keith’s hand, but he doesn’t complain.

 

Not until he sees a scene he  _definitely recognizes_ and his feet stop moving of their own accord.

 

“Keith, for Christ’s sake -” Lance starts, before he actually looks to see what Keith has stopped for.

 

_“Keith,” Lance says, amused, sitting cross-legged on the bed, his knees just inches from Keith’s. “Keith, buddy, that’s not how you play.”_

 

 _“Excuse you,” Keith replies, doing a piss-poor job of keeping a straight face. “This is_ exactly _how you play.”_

 

_There’s a deck of Altean cards spread out between them, vaguely resembling a game of Poker. The only catch is that the cards look nothing like a set of earth cards. They look more like tarot cards, the kind bullshit psychics use for their readings, and neither Keith nor Lance knows how to play properly._

 

_Lance points to one of the cards, the name of which Keith can’t read, with a galaxy Keith doesn’t recognize painted on it. “You can’t change the value of a card whenever it suits you! This one acts like a four, not a Jack, Keith.”_

 

_“That card is whatever I want it to be.”_

 

 _“You can’t - that’s not how it works!” They’re both laughing, Lance much more openly than Keith, who muffles his snickers in his hand. Lance taps two fingers on Keith’s leg, sending a jolt of electricity up Keith’s spine. “This is a game; it has rules.”_ _  
_

 

_Stop it, Keith tells his rampant feelings, trying not to shiver under Lance’s touch. Aloud, he says, “Yeah, and the rules are that I can do whatever the hell I want.”_

 

Keith remembers this just as clearly as he remembers he and Lance’s first kiss. He doesn’t know why this is in the mix of bad memories.

 

 _Normally, Keith wouldn’t let himself act like this. Not if he were around anyone other than Lance. It’s different, with him. Keith laughs and jokes around Lance much more easily, much more openly, than he does around anyone else. He’s not sure if it’s something to do with feelings, those stupid, messy, awful feelings that he wishes would just leave him be, or if it’s just the way Lance is._  
_  
_ _Either way, he’s not sure if he likes it or not. He feels so comfortable, here, playing some ridiculous card game and laughing and having way too much fun for being in the middle of a war. And_ touching. There’s so much touching, all the time, when it comes to Lance. Constant little touches that cause Keith to feel warm for hours on end.

 

_Lance leans forward slightly, close enough that his breath just barely puffs against Keith’s nose. “Keith, Keithers, Keithy-boy, despite what you may think, the world doesn’t actually revolve around you.”_

 

 _Keith snorts. Loudly. “That’s rich, coming from you, Sharpshooter.”_ _  
_

 

 _“Hey, I never said the world revolves around me!”_ _  
_

 

_“No, just that it should.”_

 

 _“Well, that’s true, it should!”_ _  
_

 

 _“It absolutely should not.”_ _  
_

 

 _“Should too!”_ _  
_

 

_“Should not.”_

 

_At some point in this, they’d gravitated even closer to each other, their noses practically touching. Keith should pull back. He most definitely should pull back._

 

_And yet, as he watches Lance’s eyes glint in the light, he can’t bring himself to move. He’s stuck, waiting for Lance to do something, to move away or to -_

 

Present-Lance says, “Keith, wait, no - I don’t, I didn’t - it’s not -”

 

Keith ignores him.

 

 _Lance’s gaze flickers down to Keith’s lips, his smile fading slowly, then quickly back up to Keith’s eyes. If Keith wasn’t this close to him, he surely wouldn’t have caught it. Nor would he have heard - or felt, more like - Lance’s breath hitch, or seen him lick his lips in what was probably meant to be a discreet way._ _  
_

 

_“Keith,” Lance whispers, eyes full of something like desire._

 

_They’re barely inches apart, heads titling left, noses brushing, eyelids fluttering shut. Alarm bells are going off in Keith’s head, throwing up red flags and trying to remind him what a terrible idea this is, but for once, he ignores the warnings._

 

_He’s not sure who moves first, but they’re kissing, mouths slotting together, soft but heated. Lance’s hand comes up to rest on Keith’s cheek, the fingers of his other hand tangling in Keith’s hair. Keith yanks him closer by the hip with one hand, leaning back on the other as Lance presses closer to him. The Altean cards flutter to the floor, swept off the bed by Lance's movement._

 

__

 

_Lance’s lips are soft. Keith doesn’t know why he’s surprised about this, with how obsessed Lance is with his skin, but he can’t really think about it when the boy is halfway in his lap, pushing him onto his back. Keith’s head hits the pillow with no break in the kiss as Lance’s fingers slide down his arms, slip under the hem of his shirt, brush against his bare skin._

 

_And it’s different this time. Yes, they’ve kissed before, and yes, both of those times meant something to Keith (though he can’t speak for Lance), but this is so much different._

 

 _Those other times were_ heat of the moment  _sort of incidents. Neither of them were quite right in the head during those kisses, whether it was sleep deprivation or homesickness or the adrenaline spike that always comes  just after their action-packed missions. They were unstable. Vulnerable._

 

_But now they're just themselves. In this moment, they're not soldiers or heroes or defenders of the universe. They're just teenagers, for once. Just two boys with not-so-platonic feelings for each other and no more space between them._

 

Keith’s voice comes out much less steady than he would’ve liked. “I - you - this is,  _why_ is this -”

 

“Keith, please, just let me - I can explain, it’s not - it’s not what you think -”

 

_Keith flips them over, careful of the lack of room on the bed, mouths at a spot just below Lance’s jaw. He's rewarded with the drag of Lance’s fingernails along his sides, and he groans, recapturing Lance’s kiss-swollen lips._

 

 _The kisses soon turn slower, sweeter. Keith finds himself smiling against Lance’s mouth, because this is what he's wanted all this time. Not the sloppy, tear-stained kisses meant to comfort, and not the rushed, adrenaline-fueled kisses meant to reassure -_ yes, I’m alive, I’m okay, you didn't lose me _\- though he likes those, too. But this, the casualness of it all, the way that their feelings are not spoken verbally, but pressed into each other’s lips, this is what he's craved for so long._

 

_Because those other kisses can be passed off like they were nothing, like they meant nothing, but there's no excuse for this. No unchecked emotions, no near-death experience, nothing._

 

_And this time, Keith asks Lance to stay._

 

_He whispers it against Lance’s lips, lets the one word hold so much more meaning than it has to._

 

_And this time, Lance says yes._

 

Keith’s hand slips out of Lance’s, falls back to his side.

 

 _Stop it,_ he tells himself.  _Don’t make this a big deal. Don’t be hurt. Don’t be hurt. It’s not worth it. Don’t be hurt._

 

“ _Please_ , Keith, just listen to me!”

 

Keith turns to him and it’s like the memory deliberately shifts so it’s in his line of sight, still.

 

_The thing about waking up alone is that you feel it before you even know you're awake._

 

 _It's in the lack of warmth that_ should be  _provided by the person you fell asleep with. It’s in the barely-there scent of saltwater and fresh cotton that_ should be _stronger. It’s in the cold spot behind you that_ should be _taken up by an actual person._

 

_And it's in the tightness of Keith’s chest when he wakes in the middle of the night to an empty bed and a heavy heart._

 

“Go ahead,” Keith hears himself say, almost from a distance. He needs an explanation just as much as Lance needs the chance to give one, and he doesn’t want to - to do what he always does and jump to conclusions or something. Not with this, not with Lance. “Explain away, Lance. What’ve you got for this one?”

Lance runs an agitated hand through his hair, taking a deep, steadying breath. “It's not what you think, Keith. It's - it's not that I didn't - didn’t  _like it_ or something. I just - I regret -”

 

“Oh, wow.”

 

“No, no! I don't mean that I regret the kiss, I don't!”

 

“Then what -”

 

“I regret leaving!” Lance shouts.

 

Oh. That -

 

That makes sense.

 

But then why  _did_  he leave?

 

Lance is already answering the question before Keith can ask it. “I regret leaving, okay, and I - I know it's no excuse, but…I was scared, alright? I was scared of waking up next to you, come morning, because that - that would make it real and then we'd have to talk about it and make a decision about where we were going and I - I wasn't ready for that.”

 

Keith doesn't really know what to say to that.

 

It's understandable, really,  _obviously,_ because Keith was scared witless, too. When they kissed that time, when they kissed the previous two times, when Keith even realized he liked Lance. He was so afraid of fucking something up, like he always finds a way to, that he just sat back and let all fester until -

 

Until they ended up here.

 

Lance is still staring at him, pleading, waiting for a response.

 

“I get it,” Keith says, and Lance’s eyes go bright with hope. “Honestly, it - I don't know if it would've been better to just talk it out or not. Maybe it's good that you left.”

 

“You think -”

 

“I was scared, too, Lance.” Keith will never admit it to anyone, not even Lance, but this - relationships, feelings, the emotional vulnerability of it all - scares him more than fighting a fucking war. “Neither of us were ready for the conversation we would've had to have, so…so yeah, maybe it's better that you weren't there. In the morning.”

 

“Oh,” Lance says. “I - yeah, you're - you're probably right.”

 

“I’m always right,” Keith replies, teasingly, hoping to find some semblance of normal.

 

Lance doesn't dignify that with a response, just laughs and rolls his eyes and takes Keith’s hand again and tugs him back into step.

 

Only now does Keith notice that the mist has faded.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It’s been hours. An indiscernible number of hours.

 

Nothing has happened since they came out the other side of the haze of bad memories, and it’s…suspicious, to say the least.

 

Best case scenario: the two of them wander around for a while, maybe a few more hours, find whatever exit they’re supposed to find, and it’s over.

 

Worst case scenario: this, apparently.

 

Lance’s fingers are still entwined with Keith’s, but Lance hasn’t looked at him since. His gaze is focused on a spot somewhere in the distance - what he’s looking at, Keith doesn’t know. There’s a hint of something in his eyes, a sparkle of worry, a glint of fear.

 

Keith starts to ask what’s wrong, but then -

 

_They all hate you._

 

\- he hears it.

 

It’s less of a voice and more of a wisp of thought, the words projected directly into Keith’s head. Keith feels Lance’s grip on his hand tighten and knows that Lance is hearing it too.

 

_Not good enough._

 

Keith turns in a quick circle, dragging Lance with him, but it’s still just empty space. Narrowing his eyes and worrying on his bottom lip, he looks to Lance and starts to say, “What is -”

 

He stops abruptly as a shock runs through him, like jumping into a cold swimming pool, and he’s assaulted with thoughts and emotions and feelings that  _definitely aren’t his._

 

_Worthless. Unworthy of even being a part of the team._

 

_You’re holding them back. You’ve got nothing to offer._

 

_You’re average. Useless. Just a placeholder they’re using until they can find a Paladin who isn’t a pathetic dumbass._

 

Keith wants to hurl. Lance’s grip goes slack.

 

 

He’s swimming in sadness and pain and someone else’s self-hatred.

 

The thoughts become less and less coherent and more and more abstract. The words begin to blur, fading into little snippets of just sheer  _pain_. It washes over him, leaving him dizzy and nauseas, a flood of anxiety and doubt.

 

_You’re a disappointment._

 

And then Keith can feel  _everything_ that Lance feels. All the sharp emotions bubbling up in Lance’s chest, pulsing through his veins - it’s like the mind melding exercises that Allura makes the paladins do but  _so much worse._

 

Keith is no stranger to bad thoughts, but he’s never felt anything this awful. He hates it, hates that this is how Lance feels, hates  _himself_ for - for -

 

_Idiot, screw-up._

 

He doesn’t deserve to be here, to be a part of the team. All he does is screw things up, he’s a fucking joke of a second-rate pilot -

 

Fuck, it hurts. Nobody cares, nobody takes him seriously. And why should they? He can’t even carry out another person’s plan properly, why would they listen to his ideas? He’s one fuck-up after the other, and it’s no wonder that Shiro likes Keith better -

 

Wait, wait _-_

 

Keith feels Lance’s hand slip away from his and he’s yanked back into his horrible, messy reality as Lance drops to the ground, pulling his legs tight to his chest. Lance’s eyes are squeezed shut, and he presses his hands to his ears in a futile attempt to block out the words. He’s crying.

 

So is Keith.

 

Fuck _._

 

Keith wipes furiously at his eyes with his sleeve, takes a deep breath, and kneels down in front of Lance, whose body shakes with sobs that Keith can only just hear over the noise in his head.

 

_Annoying, replaceable, average._

 

Lance is mouthing something - or saying it, perhaps, but Keith can’t really tell the difference. It takes him much too long to figure out that the words are being repeated.

 

“ _Stop it, stop it, stop it,_ ” Lance murmurs as he rocks back and forth, over and over and over.

 

Keith puts a cautious hand on Lance’s knee, and, when Lance doesn’t react, he leans forward, says loudly, “ _This_ is what you think of yourself?” and immediately regrets it.

 

Lance’s rocking slows and it’s all Keith needs to see. He carefully takes Lance’s wrists and pulls Lance’s hands away from his ears.

 

“You’re wrong,” Keith says, and suddenly he’s laughing. It’s breathless and slightly hysterical and the absolute  _worst_ thing to be doing right now, but now that he’s started, he can’t stop. “You - I can’t believe - you’re so fucking  _wrong_ , Lance.”

 

With a bitter, watery laugh-turned-sob, Lance chokes out, “Gee, thanks.”

 

“No, I -” Keith clears his throat around his snickers. “Just - you - you actually think you're  _replaceable?”_  It’s the one he latches onto, because how could Lance think he could  _ever_  be replaced?

 

Lance’s eyes open, just barely, and for a moment, Lance just peers at him. He looks…tired. And wary.

 

And almost angry.

 

_The only reason you’re in fighter class is because the best pilot of your generation was kicked out._

 

“Lying to me isn’t gonna help, asshole,” Lance spits.

 

 _“What?”_ He doesn’t even mean to say it, but as soon as he opens his mouth, that’s what comes out. “The hell are you -”

 

Lance cuts him off with a scoff, folding his arms across his knees and resting his head in his arms, and Keith can  _feel_ Lance’s ire, along with that feeling of inadequacy, creeping back into Keith’s senses. It’s as if Lance’s emotions are bleeding into Keith (it makes sense, in a way, seeing as they’re in Lance’s own mind, though the reality of that doesn't make sense to begin with. All in all, it’s giving Keith a headache).

 

“I”m not  _that much_ of an idiot, Keith,” Lance says, his face flushed red, looking up at Keith through glassy, dull eyes. “I know I’m a screw-up, okay? I know I’m irritating and I can’t do anything right and I’m the weakest link on the team, alright? I  _know_.”

 

Keith opens his mouth.

 

And closes it again.

 

Furrows his brow and just thinks,  _how can a boy this wonderful think so little of himself?_

 

He’ll never say it out loud, but Keith has always sort of looked up to Lance. Not in the same way he looks up to Shiro, like an older brother or a mentor, but in the  _I wish I was more like you_ sort of way.

 

And now? Well, now that admiration is growing even more because he can see the effort that goes into Lance just  _being Lance._

 

Keith has never been good at comforting people, but he opens his mouth again, and for once, the words come easily.

 

“There wouldn’t be a team without you. And I don’t - I don’t mean that like we wouldn’t be able to form Voltron or fight Zarkon or something like that. I mean that we’d be a mess without you.” Lance’s hands curl into fists at his sides. Keith barrels on. “You - you’re like the glue that keeps this goddamn team together. We all would’ve fallen apart a long time ago if it weren’t for the way you brighten a room just with your fucking presence!

 

“Listen, Lance, you don’t have to be the best at any one thing to be special. Even if you did, you do have a - a  _thing.”_  Keith’s hands rise, of their own accord, to cup Lance’s face. His own cheeks flush, but he doesn’t let go. “You’re an incredible shot - it’s amazing, really - but more than that, you -” Keith’s voice softens “- you care about people. You care about every individual person in this fucked-up universe, and that’s something really incredible, Lance. You see the good in everyone, and maybe that works against you every once in a while, but…I wish I had that faith sometimes. I wish I could be as good a person as you.

 

“We need you, Lance. We want you here.”

 

Keith touches their foreheads together and says, “Lance, please just  _look at me_ .”

 

Lance finally does, meeting Keith’s eyes with tears still streaming down his face.

 

“You’re not the weakest link, Lance. You’re the chain that holds us all together.”

 

Silence.

 

The feelings are still there, scratching at the edges of Keith’s mind, but all he hears, now, is his own voice, his own words replaying over themselves.  _A mess without you. We want you here. Not the weakest link._

 

And then Lance is throwing his arms around Keith’s neck and burying his face in Keith’s sleeve and  _bawling_ and  _fuck_ , it’s not okay and Keith should be able to do more for Lance.

 

But somewhere in the mess of tears and Keith’s whispered reassurances is Lance, sobbing out a mess of  _thank you thank you thank you,_ and Keith knows he’s at least done something right.

 

They’ll be talking about this later, Keith decides. For now, though, he pulls Lance infinitely closer and rides out the storm.

  


* * *

 

 

“Every time I think it's over,” Lance says, “my own head never fails to say,  _think again, motherfucker.”_

 

Keith snorts. “Even your own mind is against you.”

 

“Exactly!” Lance exclaims, throwing his hands - and, subsequently, one of Keith’s - up. “I mean, not only does this all make  _zero_ sense, but I’m being fucking sabotaged by  _my_ brain!”

 

The humor of this is lessened by the fact that it's completely and totally true, no exaggeration necessary. The mist is back for another round - Keith doesn’t want to know what it’s planning to throw at them this time. Lance has, seemingly, recovered from the last incident, but he’s still a little…muted, maybe. Subdued.

 

As they step into the mist, with no debate this time - Lance is right, they can’t just wander around aimlessly until something decides to take pity on them - Lance huffs a loud sigh, adjusting his grip on Keith’s hand. “You ready for part - uh, what part would this be, you think?”

 

“Depends. Is it just everything  _after_ the dream world or are we including the rest?”

 

“Hm…just after.”

 

Keith thinks it over, as he blinks hard in an attempt to make the fog stop blurring his vision. “I believe this is part five, then.”

 

Lance hums, and then the mist parts around them.

 

 _Here we go again,_ Keith thinks.

 

With the memories, the mist had been all-encompassing, as if it was trying to swallow them up and add them to the list of memories. Now, though, the mist has created a space for them, swirling around them, everywhere but the smallish circle they watch from.

 

Different. Keith wonders if different is good or bad.

 

Neither, really, as it turns out.

 

Lance is trying to fake confidence, but Keith can feel the discomfort rolling off him in waves. Keith squeezes his hand in a way that he hopes is reassuring.

 

Keith is ready to bolt, not at all in the mood to watch more of Lance’s memories, but the flashbacks don’t come. In fact, the only thing that appears in the mist is Lance.

 

Lance, as he is now - nineteen, dressed in that ratty old jacket and jeans, scarred but bright-eyed. He’s saying something, something Keith can’t hear, but he’s obviously telling some joke that he thinks is hilarious. Nobody else is there, and yet Lance stops halfway through the joke, smile dropping - Keith doesn’t know why he knows, but he picks up, easily, on the fact that this Lance was just snapped at for cracking jokes during a serious moment.

 

The little snippet starts over. Keith furrows his brow, confused, until he notices that another Lance has appeared in the mist, a couple feet away from the first.

 

This Lance leans forward, arm propped on an invisible surface, and smiles his flirtiest smile at someone Keith can’t see. He says something, probably some cheesy pickup line, a moment passes, and then a proper smile lights up his face, as if whoever he was flirting with responded well. But then he says something else - there’s a beat, and then Lance’s face falls.

 

Rejected, seemingly.

 

Keith glances at Lance - the  _real_ Lance. His jaw is tight, teeth gritted, and his eyes are dark, with either sadness or anger or both. Keith wants to say something, but the mist hasn’t quit yet.

 

Lance, down on one knee, in his paladin armor, blaster in hand. He takes a breath, finger poised over the trigger. Lines up the shot. Fires. And, apparently, misses. His eyes blow wide and his mouth opens, perhaps to scream or perhaps to warn someone else. Keith doesn’t find out, because the scene pauses, waits a beat, and skips back to the beginning.

 

Lance, sitting with his arms around his knees, staring, seemingly, at nothing. Tears well in his eyes, and he runs a shaking hand through his hair, presses the other over his mouth as a sob shakes his body.

 

Lance, nodding along, absently, to something another person must be saying, then jolting back into reality. Shrugging helplessly at this invisible other person, shaking his head, clearly not understanding. Biting his lip and digging his nails into his palm as the person starts again, bitter that he couldn’t get it the first time.

 

This continues.

 

There’s a clear trend to the versions of Lance that come up. Some of them are Lance getting shut down, being told to stop doing what he’s doing, whatever that may be, while others are Lance at all of his lower points.

 

They’re all sides of himself that Lance hates, if the look on the real-Lance’s face is anything to go by.

 

The snippets keep multiplying, but Keith has stopped watching them. Instead, he turns to Lance, whose lower lip is trembling and whose eyes are filled with something akin to disgust.

 

Keith can deal with this. He can. He dealt with the verbal version of this mere hours ago, though that was more of a self-worth thing. That was easier - Keith could just assure him of his worth and move on. This, however, is a bit more delicate.

 

These are whole parts of himself that Lance would cut off if he could.

 

But Keith is the only one here to deal with this, and so he does.

 

“Lance,” he says. Lance doesn’t seem to hear him. He says his name three more times before Lance looks at him.

 

At least there are no tears this time. Lance, apparently, has run out of those.

  
“Lance, listen to me.” Keith has just about run out of motivational speeches, here, but he decides to just cut right to the chase. “Lance, you - you shouldn’t hate these parts of you. They - they make you, you, Lance, and I, personally, think you’re pretty great the way you are. You’re amazing, and all of  _this_  - the jokes, the flirting, even the sadness - is a part of that.”

 

Lance looks unconvinced.

 

Keith continues, “You don’t have to make every shot, Lance. People make mistakes because people aren’t perfect - no one’s perfect, Lance, so you don’t have to try to be. You don’t have to make every shot, and you don’t have to a genius. You just have to be you.”

 

This time around, it’s not as dramatic. There are no tears. There’s no hugging. There’s no _thank you_.

 

Instead, Lance kisses him, soundly, on the mouth, as the mist evaporates around them.

 

It’s not a long kiss, and it’s not a deep kiss. It’s both the start of one thing and the end of another, though Keith knows that Lance’s issues won’t be fixed so easily.

 

But Keith’ll be there. Through everything, whatever Lance needs, Keith’ll be there.

 

When the kiss breaks, Lance doesn’t pull away. They stand in silence, foreheads just barely touching.

 

Lance opens his mouth, after a long moment of silence, and Keith expects something warm and soft and heartfelt.

 

Then -

 

“God, I want to go home,” Lance says.

 

And there it is.

 

That’s the key.

 

Five words - five words is all it takes, or perhaps it’s the sentiment itself, to end this all.Maybe Lance wasn't ready, before, and all they needed was for him to really, truly  _want_ to go home. Maybe it was something about the wording, maybe it had to be that specific phrase -  _I want to go home -_ that did it. Maybe it was just that there were a few things they needed to deal with first, and now they've seen all they need to see.

 

Whatever the case, as soon as the last word comes out of his mouth, the stars explode.

 

 

* * *

 

 

  

Keith jerks upright in bed, gasping for air, his chest heaving and his head spinning. There’s something on his head - he yanks it off, blindly throwing it off the bed and then cringing at the noise. He scrambles backward, subsequently pulling out whatever tube was stuck in his arm, until his back hits the headboard -  _no_ , the  _wall_  - and he looks around frantically, trying to figure out where he is.

 

And falls off the bed.

 

He yelps, rubbing at the elbow he banged on the floor. Voices swirl around him, but he can’t make out what they’re saying. His head feels fuzzy and his vision is hazy. Something’s off, really off, because he doesn’t recognize where he is, doesn’t recognize anything right now.

 

There’s a hand on his knee. There’s a voice saying something next to him, and there’s a hand on his knee, and there’s too much, too fast, too soon, and Keith jerks away, stumbling to his feet. His hand goes to the knife on his belt - but no, there’s nothing there, his knife is missing. He pats around his hips, in frantic search of something to protect himself with, but comes up with nothing.

 

Someone steps toward him. Keith says, much less intimidating as he’d like, “Don’t - don’t come near me!”

 

The person takes a single step backward just as Keith does the same - and feels his back press against a wall. He’s stuck. Cornered.

 

But then -

 

“Keith,” the person says, and he recognizes the voice.

 

It comes back all at once, then, hitting Keith like a freight train. He remembers everything, in this moment - the mission, the dream world, Lance’s head,  _Lance -_ and, with that, comes the realization that it’s over.

 

It’s over, it’s done. He’s alive, he’s okay, and he’s back on the castleship.

 

The world comes into focus, and Keith has never been happier than he is now to be  _anywhere._

 

In front of him, Shiro says, “Keith, hey, it’s okay. You’re okay, but do you -”

 

Keith cuts him off with a hug, throwing his arms around Shiro’s neck and yanking him down a few inches. Shiro’s surprise lasts only moments before he’s hugging back, arms tight around Keith’s waist.

 

“Shiro - Shiro, thank god, I - I’m so -”

 

He doesn’t know what he wants to say - there’s so much  _to_ say, maybe too much, and he can’t get the words out of his mouth. Thankfully, Shiro doesn’t press him, just lets him bury his face in Shiro’s sleeve and breathe.

 

“Wait, wait -” Keith pulls back quickly, glancing around the room. “What - where’s - is Lance okay?”

 

Shiro opens his mouth, but Keith doesn’t hear what he has to say because he finds the answer himself.

 

Lance sits on another bed a few feet away and his eyes are open. His eyes are open and he’s  _awake._ He’s staring at his hands like he can’t decide if they’re his or not, but he’s awake and all of this was  _not_ for naught.

 

And Keith loves him, because he’s never done anything by half and this is no exception. Keith loves him, so much, in the moment when Lance looks up and meets his eyes, and will love him in any and all other moments to come.

 

Lance stares at him. And stares and stares and stares. And says, “Hey, Keith,” in the smallest voice Keith has ever heard from him.

 

Keith moves to him. Sits down on the bed next to him. Takes one of his hands.

 

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.

 

Lance nods, bottom lip wobbling just a little, and squeezes his hand. And that’s all that needs to be said.

 

Keith hears Shiro leave the room as Lance leans forward to press his forehead into Keith’s shoulder. Keith’s expecting him to cry, to shake with sobs and get snot all over Keith’s shirt, but Lance just sits there, silent. And maybe there have been enough tears in the past few days, between the two of them, to last a lifetime.

 

They stay there for a few minutes. For a few minutes, all they have to do is take up space.

 

Shiro comes back in with the rest of the team, soon enough.

 

There’s hugging and crying and  _I missed you_ ’s and  _I’m so glad you’re okay_ ’s.

 

And yeah, Keith thinks, as Lance catches his eye from the other side of the team’s third group hug, they just might be okay, after all.

  
  


* * *

  


 

He's not expecting Lance to be here, but at the same time, Keith isn't surprised that he is.

 

Keith falters when he sees Lance, sitting at the controls on the observation deck, gazing at a galaxy that looks oddly familiar. It's been six days since they woke up, and there's still this distance, this disconnect between the two of them. He understands that Lance needed space, and honestly, he did too, but Lance has barely even looked at him since they woke. Keith doesn't like it. He'd even rather go back to having Lance hurl insults at him if it means that, at the very least, Lance is talking to him.

 

He hasn't managed to bring up what happened, or the rift it created between them - it's hard to know what to say. This sort of situation isn't exactly something you find in a self-help book. He really doesn't want to make things worse, and he doesn't even know what Lance is feeling because Lance won't tell him. So he just hasn't said anything at all.

 

He figured Lance would come to him eventually, but so far, nothing. There's so much hanging over them and it's suffocating, but what's worse is that Keith feels like he's losing Lance all over again.

 

They need to talk so they can figure out…everything. What they are to each other, now. What they want to be to each other. What they  _can be_ to each other.

 

But he's scared.

 

When he really lets himself think about it, he knows that's a big part of why he hasn't confronted Lance yet. For the first couple days, he was just letting Lance breathe, letting him adjust to being back in reality. But it’s been almost a week, and Lance has made no move to bridge the gap between them. If it were most anyone else, Keith wouldn't care, but it's not anyone else. And he does care. And he's terrified of fucking this up and losing the only person he's ever cared about in this way.

 

He could just leave. Not deal with this now, not yet. Go back to his room, consider how the hell he’s going to handle the inevitable conversation when it happens, eventually.

 

He could stay. Perhaps Lance would finally look him in the eye.

 

Or Lance might still just look right through him.

 

He's still stuck when Lance makes the decision for him.

 

“Hey,” Lance says, but doesn't turn around. He sounds tired, but not physically. Emotionally. “Are you just gonna stand there or do you wanna come sit down?”

 

Keith jumps only a little, swallows hard. Opens his mouth, closes it again. Doesn't quite trust himself to speak. Instead, he forces his feet to move, walks over to Lance, nervous energy coursing through his veins despite the late hour, sits carefully next to him.

 

Lance keeps his eyes on the stars, says, “Couldn't sleep?”

 

He's really not in the mood for small talk, but Keith grinds out a response, “No, not really. You?” His voice is strained.

 

Either Lance doesn't notice or he ignores it - Keith suspects it's the latter. “Nope. Haven't been able to for a while, actually.”

 

He says it so casually, like he's talking about the weather or something. Keith studies Lance’s profile, shifting uncomfortably, watches Lance pull his jacket tighter around himself. Keith hates this, hates the way they've been dancing around their problems, hates that they have problems to begin with.

 

This is exactly why Keith was so afraid of his feelings for Lance. He didn't want to upset the fragile balance of their relationship with something as silly as a  _crush_ , and now…well, now there's no balance to their relationship at all and the crush isn't exactly silly anymore, nor can it really be described as a crush.

 

 _Get it over with,_ he tells himself.  _Just rip the bandaid off._

 

“Lance -”

 

“This is where we had our first kiss.”

 

Taken aback, Keith gapes at him. Lance briefly cuts his eyes to him before quickly looking away, while Keith wraps his arms around himself, croaks out, “Yeah. It is.”

 

Lance hums quietly, tapping his fingers absently on his knee. He seems content to just leave it at that, or maybe he’s waiting for Keith to pipe up again. It’s silent for a while, as Keith tries to figure out what he wants to say.

 

“Lance, I -” Keith starts, stops. He’s rehearsed this in his head a billion times, considered all the different ways this conversation could go. He’s got a worst case-scenario and a best case-scenario and everything in between. Most of the scenarios ended somewhere in the middle, not exactly good but not exactly bad. Really, what he wants the most is just for this whole thing to be resolved. He's tired of having to tiptoe around Lance all the time. He’s even more tired of Lance tiptoeing around him.

 

He takes a breath, begins again. Asks the question that’s been burning a hole in his chest for days. “Do you regret it?”

 

“What?” Lance turns, finally looks at Keith dead-on, brow furrowed in confusion. Keith starts to repeat himself, already choking on the words, but Lance seems to realize, albeit belatedly, what he means. His eyes clear and he looks away again. “I - no. No, I don’t regret it.”

 

Keith breathes a sigh of relief. At least he can cross that question of the list.

 

“Do you?” Lance asks quietly.

 

“No.” Keith could never regret anything about that night.

 

“Oh.”

 

“Why ‘oh’?”

 

“I dunno, I just -” Lance fidgets with the hem of his jacket, clearly nervous. His voice is low, almost sad. “I just thought you might.”

 

Keith wishes he could be surprised at that, but it’s nothing he didn’t expect. This is part of the reason he was so anxious to talk to Lance, because he knew Lance would be beating himself up over - over something. None of this is Lance’s fault, but he’s good at finding things to blame himself for, it seems.

 

He’s about to tell Lance that, but when he opens his mouth, what comes out is, “I’ve never regretted a second that I’ve spent with you.”

 

 _That_ gets Lance’s attention. The boy’s head jerks up and his eyes widen almost comically - like a deer in headlights. He stutters out something unintelligible, and Keith can see his blush, even in the dim lighting.

 

Keith keeps talking. “Listen, Lance, all of this - it’s not your fault. And it’s not - it’s not something we can just forget about. We have to talk about it at some point. Even if it’s just so you can tell me that you wanna pretend it never happened -”

 

“I don’t,” Lance cuts him off, and looks almost as surprised as Keith about it. He pulls his knees to his chest, wraps his arms around his legs, rests his cheek on his knees. Stares at Keith with this weird, earnest look in his eyes. “I wasn’t sure for a while, what I wanted. And I’m still not sure about a lot of things. But pretending it never happened…that’s not what I want.”

“Oh,” Keith says, “okay.”

 

“Okay?”

 

“Yeah. Just - you’re sure?”

 

Lance nods into his legs. “I’m sure. Why, is there - is there something you want to forget about?” He’s not very fond of the idea, if his tone is anything to go by.

 

“No, no.” Keith hates having to do this, the back and forth, but at least they’re making progress. They can’t move forward until they both know each other’s takes on this. “That’s not why I asked - I just don't want to pressure you or something.”

 

Lance snorts softly. “You're not pressuring me, Keith. If anything -”

 

“Don’t,” Keith says. “You haven’t been pressuring me either, Lance.”

 

“But -”

 

“Lance, that world - that is  _not_ on you. That experience was not on you; you can’t beat yourself up over it.” Keith is close to snapping, but he dials it back at the look on Lance’s face. “And god, even if it was on you - I know you feel guilty about our - our  _relationship_ in that world, but you did  _not_ take advantage of me. I wasn’t drunk and I wasn’t asleep, okay? It was still me.”

 

There are tears in Lance’s eyes. He laughs wetly, self-deprecatingly. “Keith, you don’t have to act like I didn’t fuck this all up. I know I ruined this, okay, it’s -”

 

“You didn’t ruin anything! That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” Keith almost yells, frustrated. He lowers his voice, pleading for Lance to understand. “You can’t possibly have ruined something that’s  _not ruined_ .”

 

Lance is actually crying, at this point, tears sliding down his cheeks and gathering at his chin. He doesn’t bother raising a hand to wipe his face, just lets the tears drip to the floor. Keith isn’t sure if the tears are a bad sign or not. “It’s not?”

 

Keith’s eyes are prickling, too, now. “It doesn’t have to be.”

 

Sniffling, Lance chokes out, “You’d still - you’d still want this?”

 

“ _Yes.”_

 

Lance doesn't respond, just turns away from Keith, touches the control panel in front of him, zooms in on something in the galaxy projection. It takes much too long for Keith to figure out what they’re looking at.

 

“Do you ever miss it?” Lance asks, gaze locked on the projection of the earth.

 

Keith doesn't have to ponder it long because, really, there's not much to ponder. Earth was his home for seventeen years, yes, but it never really felt like it. He never really knew what  _home_ was until he got sucked into an intergalactic war. Until he met the team.

 

It was only then that he realized.

 

 _Home_ doesn't have to be a place.  _Home_ is whatever, wherever, or whoever makes you feel safe and secure and  _happy._

 

Up in space, with the people he's grown to love and view as family, that's home, to Keith.

 

It's not the answer Lance is looking for, he's sure, but it's the answer he has, and it's the answer Lance needs to hear.

 

“I know what you want me to say,” Keith says quietly, scooting a little toward Lance, “but honestly? I don't miss Earth, Lance.”

 

Lance avoids his gaze, staring almost pointedly at his feet.

 

“I always dreamed of going out into space, but not for the same reasons most eleven-year-old boys do. I wasn't looking to explore new worlds or something, I just…wanted to get off of Earth.” Keith hates this story. He hates that it's  _his_ story, not that of some character in a book, the cynical protagonist with a shitty childhood. He hates that he's the cynical protagonist.

 

“Thing is, I don't have anything to miss.” This makes Lance look at him. Keith is expecting pity, but there's surprisingly little of it from Lance. Instead, his eyes are filled with disbelief, like he can't even comprehend the idea of not having anything to come back to on Earth. “Everything and everyone I care about is up here. You, Shiro, the others, you're all up here, so this is where I want to be. My family is all on this ship, Lance.

 

“So no, I don't miss Earth,” Keith finishes, voice hollow, but miraculously steady. He watches Lance’s expression change as he processes all of this, flickering through various emotions before settling on sadness.

 

“I’m sorry,” Lance says hoarsely.

 

“It's okay,” Keith lies.

 

It's quiet for a while, the silence somehow comfortable and awkward at the same time. Keith has nothing else to offer up, so he just sits and waits for Lance to come up with something to say. They're not done here. There's still so much to talk about and they still have to decide what they'll be to each other from this point on.

 

A good three minutes passes before Lance says, all in one breath, “I know you said that I didn't take advantage of you, but you forgot, Keith. You forgot why you were there and that the whole thing wasn't real, and I still feel like I used you, somehow.”

 

And Keith could tell him again that this wasn't his fault, or remind him that  _Lance, himself_ didn't know that it wasn't real. But Lance knows these things, even if he doesn't know that he does. Lance doesn't need repeated reassurance of the same damn thing, Keith knows, so instead, he answers a question Lance hasn't even asked.

 

“Look, Lance, I wouldn't have kissed you if I remembered. But it's not for the reason you think. I wouldn't have kissed you because I would've felt like  _I_  was the one taking advantage of  _you_.”

 

And, well, Keith has always preferred the  _full truth_ over just half of it. So he takes a deep breath and says, “It's not because I didn't want to. I did. Want to, that is. I do.

 

“I’ve wanted to for a long time, Lance.”  _Go big or go home._ “I want  _you._ ”

 

He's met with silence, as Lance just looks at him, seemingly at a loss for words. Lance keeps opening his mouth and then snapping it shut again, his cheeks pink and his eyes wide.

 

It's almost laughable, with how flirty Lance usually is. Apparently, Lance will flirt with anything on legs, but as soon as someone does the same, he’s like a fish out of water.

 

It'd be laughable if Keith actually knew for sure that Lance wanted him, too, but he’s no more sure of that than he was before their first kiss.

 

“I- I, uh -” Lance runs a hand down his face, rolls his eyes toward the sky, and Keith can't tell if it's out of exasperation or nerves. There's a tentative, almost scared, edge to Lance’s voice when he finally gets the words out. “I’ve wanted you for a while, too, Keith.”

 

It's said barely above a whisper, but Keith hears it.

 

_I've wanted you for a while, too._

 

_I've wanted you._

 

 _“_ I never said anything,” Lance continues, unaware of the way his words are settling in Keith’s chest, “because I didn't know if you felt the same way, and I didn't want to mess things up between us while we're in the middle of a war and we have to be on good terms to form Voltron. But I - I do, I want to try to make this work.”

 

“That's -” Keith is laughing, full of relief and wonder and  _joy_ , and he's laughing - he and Lance have been on the same damn page this whole time. “That's the exact same reason I never told you.”

 

Lance, who'd been confused as to why the hell Keith is  _laughing_ , starts chuckling. And that sets Keith off even worse, which causes Lance to laugh harder, and the cycle continues.

 

 _Lance likes me_ , Keith thinks giddily, because he may not feel like one most of the time, but he is technically still a teenager. And Lance likes him.

 

He hasn't smiled this wide in a long time.

 

He's been unsure for so long, and now this ridiculous game can come to an end.

 

_He loves me, he loves me not._

 

_He loves me, he loves me not._

 

_He loves me._

 

The laughter dies out fairly quickly, the initial shock of this whole exchange wearing off. Lance sobers up before Keith can stop snickering.

 

“So what happens now?”

 

Keith’s laughter fades, but he can't stop smiling, so very fondly, at Lance. He shrugs, completely and totally untroubled. “Whatever we want.”

 

Lance scoffs lightly, amusedly. “That's a real nice outlook you've got there.”

 

“Well, it's a real nice night.”

 

“Oh, is it?”

 

“Very much so,” Keith says delightedly. Fuck acting like an adult, honestly.

 

Lance smiles and it's the first real smile Keith has seen on him for quite some time. He wants to kiss it off. He resists that urge.

 

“Keith, this is going to take me a while,” Lance says, smiling dropping off all on its own. “Getting used to this, you and me.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Do you? I just don't want you to get into something if -”

 

“Lance.” Keith puts a hand lightly on Lance’s knee, waits for the boy to shake him off. When he doesn't, Keith continues. “I know exactly what I'm getting into, okay? We’ll go as slow as you need.”

 

Lance glances between Keith and the hand on his knee, slowly moves his own hand to cover Keith’s. Ignoring the jolt of electricity that shot up his arm when Lance touched him, Keith carefully flips his hand over, giving Lance plenty of time to pull away. He laces their fingers together, runs his thumb along Lance’s knuckle.

 

Lance’s eyes rise back up to meet Keith’s. “Thank you,” he whispers.

 

 _I'd do anything for you,_ Keith thinks.

 

“Of course,” Keith says.

 

Lance shifts closer to him, leans his head on Keith’s shoulder, and sighs against Keith’s neck. Keith suppresses a shiver, presses a feather-light kiss to Lance’s crown, and rests his cheek on the top of Lance’s head.

 

He’s content to just stay there, with Lance, for the rest of the night.

 

And maybe the universe will let them be.

  
  


Feelings don't win the war. But sometimes, when things get bad and there's no end in sight, they remind you what you're really fighting for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE DO NOT REPOST ART FROM THIS FIC
> 
> INSTEAD, REBLOG DIRECTLY FROM [HERE](http://forsakenangel88.tumblr.com/post/164054345518/my-part-of-the-voltronbang-i-was-partnered-with)
> 
> hit me up on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pidgeottogunderson)


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